Amazon and Kobo are heavily competing against each other when it comes to entry level e-Readers. The Kindle Basic came out at the tail end of 2014, whereas the new Kobo model was issued a few week ago. What device is better? Today, we evaluate the overall hardware and e-book experience.
The Kobo Touch 2.0 and Kindle Basic are fairly similar when it comes to the specs. They both feature a six inch e-Ink Pearl display with a resolution of 800 x 600 at 167 ppi. It is important to note that these aren’t capacitive touch, like the Kindle Voyage or Kobo Aura, instead they are employing older Neonode Infrared technology.
Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ Freescale processor, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal memory. The one advantage Kobo has is the ability to clone the SD card that is hidden underneath the removable back plate and boost the memory up to 32 GB.
In the video we will document the design differences between these two devices and look at the main UI features. You will get a sense of what Amazon and Kobo are both doing to differentiate themselves from each other and the competition. Additionally, we will also look at the internet browser and checkout e-books.
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.