Kobo has a trio of new e-readers that will be in customers’ hands at the end of April. One of the most popular and cost-effective is the Rakuten Kobo Clara BW, a black-and-white e-reader. What are the major selling points? This will be the first Kobo with a new e-paper panel, Carta 1300; it will also be repairable, so users can purchase kits to fix the circuit board, screen or battery, and all the adhesives. It will be available for $129.99.
The Rakuten Kobo Clara BW features a 6-inch E INK Carta 1300 e-paper panel 35% more responsive than the previous generation Kobo Clara 2e. The resolution is 1448 x 1072 resolution with Dark Mode and 300 PPI. The screen is recessed and does not have glass. Text will pop due to the exposed e-paper screen being closer to your eyes. The e-reader only comes in one colour: black. The ComfortLight PRO, adjustable brightness system, will give you both white and amber LED lights to read during the night.
Underneath the hood is a MediaTek processor MT8113L – ARM A53 @1GHz, 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. In the past, Kobo relied on storage on SD cards; this e-reader uses EMC storage soldered onto the circuit board. You can buy audiobooks and ebooks from Kobo. Listen to them via Bluetooth 5.0 and pair earbuds, headphones or an external speaker. You can also use the internet browser to visit websites. Pocket intergration can save articles to your Kobo, it is also compatible with thousands of libraries to browse, borrow and read via Overdrive. Connect all of these services WiFi 802.11 ac/b/g/n (i.e. dual band, 2.4 and 5 GHz).
USB-C will allow you to transfer content to your e-reader and charge it. Kobo Clara BW has complete waterproof protection with IPX8. That means it’s always ready for unexpected spills, splashes by the sea, or a relaxing soak in the tub. It is powered by a low-end 1,500 mAh battery, and the dimensions are 112 x 160 x 9.2 mm and weighs 174 g
Given Kobo’s continued commitment to more eco-conscious practices, Kobo Clara BW will join the new lineup of e-readers made with recycled and ocean-bound plastics. This diverts CDs and DVDs from landfills and plastic bottles from the planet’s oceans. The packaging for the devices is also made with 100% FSC-certified recycled paper and is printed with soy ink.
Kobo wants to extend the life of the Clara BW and ensure it will last a long time with a new initiative. Rakuten Kobo is partnering with iFixit, the leader in the technology repairability space, making it easy for customers to fix their e-readers and replace standard components.
The Clara BW e-reader was designed to be taken apart. They will offer battery replacements, circuit boards and screen replacements. They will also send out the proper tools and adhesives. Kobo will not fulfill these replacements. Instead, iFixit will have a dedicated page on its website, which will go live on April 30th, the day the e-readers start shipping and will be available in a retail setting. One of the big reasons why Kobo wants to repair your device is to keep it out of the landfills and do something hardly anyone else does: make your e-reader a reading tool you can use for a decade and eliminate the notion of planned obsolescence. If you keep your e-reader for a while, you eventually will get out of warranty, hence the iFixit program. “We don’t want to force people to buy a new model because their old one is broken or unreliable.”
Kobo supports 13 different fonts and over 50 font styles. 15 file formats supported natively (EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR). You can sideload in all of these supported book formats via Calibre, or you can buy content from other bookstores and load them in with Adobe Digital Editions. One of the downfalls of audiobook support, is that you cannot sideload in audiobooks, you can only buy and listen to them through Kobo.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
