Kobo Libra Colour E-Reader

Kobo's Libra Colour is an e-reader with a color e-ink screen that displays book covers and highlighted passages in muted color. Physical page-turn buttons on the right side make it feel more like a book than any touchscreen-only reader I have used. Kobo positions itself as the alternative to Kindle for people who do not want to be locked into Amazon's library. The device supports epub, PDF, and library lending through OverDrive, and that means I can borrow books from my university library directly to the device. The screen is 7 inches with a front light that adjusts color temperature from cool blue to warm amber. Reading on it at night with the warm light is genuinely easier on my eyes than a phone or tablet. Color e-ink is not as vivid as an iPad, the reds look like muted salmon and the blues like dusty denim. For book covers and highlighted text the color adds enough visual interest to be worth the upgrade. Kobo's built-in annotation system syncs highlights and notes to the Kobo cloud, and I use it to mark passages for class discussions. I admire that Kobo built a product around the idea that reading should be its own activity, separate from email and social media and notifications. The device doesn't do anything except display text and that limitation is the feature. Physical buttons mean I can turn pages without touching the screen, which keeps the reading experience closer to paper than swipe-based readers achieve. At $220 it costs $70 more than the comparable Kindle Paperwhite, and that premium pays for the color screen and the open format support that frees you from a single bookstore.