I love e-readers. They’re convenient and one of the few pieces of tech that’s not trying to overload your senses with unnecessary distractions. That’s why I was worried when I heard Kobo was releasing color e-readers. I pictured an ipads-like display littered with apps—yet another screen for my eyes to burn themselves on.
Thankfully, that's not the case. It’s still the E Ink you know and love from your favorite e-readers, just no longer restricted to black and white. Do you need a color screen to read ebooks? No. Is it fun? Yes.
Color Me Impressed
A color screen means you can see your favorite ebook covers in all their glory, but it also means illustrated children's books and graphic novels really come to life on the display. Curious George and Dune look beautiful on the Libra Colour's 7-inch E Ink panel.
I also tested the new Kobo Clara Colour, which has a 6-inch screen. Dune was fine, but Curious George wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing—the text in this ebook is blue on a yellow background, and the smaller screen made it all more compact in a way that was annoying to my eyes.
Having a color screen means you can write and highlight in color. You can mark up your favorite ebooks directly on the page, not just in separate note files like on a Kindle. However, all of this requires the Kobo Stylus 2, which costs an extra $70. It has a highlight button on the side and an eraser on the end. (You can't write on the Clara Colour, but you can highlight in color.) It's worth noting that the Stylus 2 was out of stock everywhere as of publishing. I've asked Kobo when it’s expected to be available again.
The Libra has a notebook section so you can jot down notes and to-do lists, manage a calendar, or doodle in eight colors plus black and gray. The colors look even more vibrant once you export notebooks to your computer, but exporting also removes the lines from page layouts like calendars and daily planners, which is unfortunate. Color ink was technically available in Kobo's supersize Elipsa 2E, meant for heavy note-taking, but since that screen supports only black and white, these colors only came across once exported to a computer.
