Kobo Aura HD review

No e-reader manufacturer has come closer to matching Amazon with the quality of its devices than Kobo in recent times, but with its latest model – the Kobo Aura HD – it’s aiming to snatch the lead. It’s marketed as the “Porsche” of e-readers, aimed at “passionate booklovers”, and at first glance it looks like one of those rare devices that matches the marketing boasts.

Pick it up, and its silky-smooth finish and solid construction immediately impress. The Aura HD’s finely buffed surface feels more like velvety-frosted glass than plastic, and the build quality is superb. Twist the chassis manfully, and there’s barely a creak, hardly a groan. It makes the Kindle Paperwhite and its siblings feel positively humdrum in comparison.

The shape of the Aura HD is unusual, too. Resembling something akin to a folded piece of paper, it has three subtle creases “folded” in the rear panel. These give you something to hold onto while reading, with your fingers resting securely on the inward crease at the centre and curling around the sides. It works brilliantly, and with every edge and corner honed to a soft curve, the Aura HD is supremely comfortable in the hand.

Even the included USB cable is designed to reinforce the overall perception of quality, with a posh braided sheath instead of the usual, drab black plastic.

The use of such quality materials sets the Kobo Aura HD apart from its rivals, but that isn’t the end to its talents. It also sports a larger 6.8in screen than most e-readers, and a higher resolution as well, at 1,080 x 1,440. That gives a pixel density of 265ppi – higher the Kindle Paperwhite’s 212ppi, which has a resolution of 758 x 1,024 squeezed into its 6in touchscreen. Remarkably, it’s on a par with the Retina display on the iPad 3 and 4.

That extra resolution doesn’t make a huge difference compared to the Paperwhite, but hold the two displays around a foot away from your face and you’ll be able to tell the two apart. It’s much crisper than the cheaper, standard 600 x 800 Kindle – but then it should be at double the price.

No flagship e-reader would be without built-in illumination these days, and the Aura HD obliges with a light that’s at least the match of the Kindle Paperwhite. The brightness is adjustable, and only the faintest hint of patchiness is evident along the bottom edge of the screen. Unlike the Paperwhite, which has its light permanently on, the Aura allows you to toggle it on and off with a button along its top edge.

Perhaps due to the larger screen, the Kobo Aura HD is on the chunky side. At 242g, it’s 12% heavier than its rival, and it’s a little less practical as a result. However, it makes up for that extra heft by including a microSD slot for expanding the 4GB of internal by another 32GB.

We’re also fans of Kobo’s revamped UI. Divided into tiles of various sizes and proportions, it displays thumbnails of books you’re currently reading, reading stats, and books you’ve finished recently or are part of the way through. Links at the bottom of the page lead to the library, the store (via single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi) and the device’s Reading Life section, where more detailed reading stats are displayed.

It’s all very simple to use. The Aura HD takes a minimum of 0.6 seconds to refresh the screen, and we found the store streamlined and responsive. Prices in the Kobo bookstore tend to be a little more expensive than in the Amazon Kindle store, but not prohibitively so, and as we’ve found in past reviews that there’s plenty of content to choose from.

If you don’t find what you’re looking for in the Kobo store, the Aura supports Adobe Digital Editions, so you can add books from other stores and digital libraries. It handles other files types with aplomb as well. We loaded our usual selection of e-reader test files on it, including some graphics-heavy PDFs, and found we were able to zoom and pan around pages with a freedom that simply isn’t available to Kindle users.

Kobo’s iOS, Android and desktop apps, meanwhile, offer a similar experience to Amazon’s Whispersync. As long as you’re connected to Wi-Fi when you finish a reading session, it’s possible to switch from the Aura HD to tablet or phone, and have the book open at the page you last read. There’s even a selection of “extra” apps and games, including a sketchpad, a chess game and a web browser. The latter is good for only casual browsing, though, due to the E Ink’s comparatively slow refresh rate.

The Kobo Aura HD is a mighty fine e-reader – the large, high-definition display is a pleasure to read on, and the front light is as bright and even as that on the Kindle Paperwhite. It really is as luxurious as e-readers come. The one fly in the ointment is the price: at £140, it costs more than most other e-readers on the market, and it isn’t that much cheaper than compact tablet rivals. Had it been £20 or £30 cheaper, we’d have recommended it without hesitation. As it is, it falls just short.

Related Posts

How to Get Max Aura in Blox Fruits Samsung Galaxy S7 Review: A Great Phone in its Day, but Don’t Buy One Private Internet Access Review Pluto TV Review—Is It Worth It? ExpressVPN Review – Unbiased and Tested In-House “Your Payment Requires Additional Review” in Zelle – What Does it Mean? CyberGhost Review How to Add a Custom Token to Trust Wallet How To Resize an Image in PhotoPea