The Kobo Arc is a tablet designed for reading and this is very evident during the first few days of use. The company has integrated aspects of their Reading Life program, which monitors your book habits and aids you in eBook discovery with a series of recommended reads. Kobo also developed “tapestries,” which is a cool way to browse directories and keep your commonly accessed programs at the forefront, via their new widgets. The Nexus 7 second generation is about as Vanilla as you can get, it is a pure Android experience. How do these tablets stack up against each other in the core process of e-Reading? We dive into it, and pit these two head to head.
The Kobo Arc features a seven inch HD display with a resolution of 1280×800 pixels and 215 PPI. The screen features IPS screen technology, which is an industry-leading display optimized for 178 degree viewing angles and ultra-durable glass, resistant to damage, scratches, bumps, and drops. This is the same type of screen technology that airline pilots have in their flight instruments. If you figure most airlines are flying above the cloud line and susceptible to lots of sunlight, this tablet excels under direct light where others fail.
Underneath the hood is a Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 1.5 GHZ dual core processor and 1 GB of RAM. There are three different storage options depending on the type of user you are—16, 32, and 64 GB. This is the first device the company has offered that actually does not have expandable memory. There is no support for MicroSD or SD cards, so you want to make sure you buy the best model to suit your needs.
The Google Nexus 7 second generation features a 7 inch full color touchscreen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. This blows away most other tablets on the market, including the Kindle Fire HD 7 (1280 x 800 pixels) or the iPad Mini (1024 x 768 pixels.) If you watch HD videos or play really good games, you will notice an increase in screen quality. You get a solid boost in audio performance, with a speaker at the top of the bezel and one on the bottom. It also has 2 GB of RAM, a 1.5 GHZ Quad-Core processor and 2 cameras.
Over the course of this e-reading comparison we check out eBooks, comics, newspapers, magazines and audio/video. We put them both through a battery of real world conditions, to give you a sense on how they both handle the same content, side by side.
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.