Are you looking to purchase an e-note in the next few weeks? The Kobo Elipsa is brand new and just started shipping. In this comparison video, we take a look at how this brand new Kobo product compares against the Onyx Boox Note 3, which has been one of the best products on the market.
The Onyx Boox Note 3 features an E INK Mobius touchscreen display with a resolution of 1872×1404 with 227 PPI. The screen is completely flush with the bezel and is protected by a layer of glass. It has both a front-lit display and color temperature system. This will allow you to read in the dark and mute the white LED lights with a combination of amber LED Lights. There are 28 LED lights in total, 14 are white and 14 of which are amber and they are placed on the bottom of the screen.
Underneath the hood is an Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor, 4GB of DDR4X RAM and 64GB of internal storage. This device is 33% faster than the Onyx Boox Note 2. It has Bluetooth 5.1 to connect up wireless accessories, such as headphones or an external speaker. You can listen to music or audiobooks via the rear speaker. You can also connect up USB-C enabled headphones that have analog/digital functionality. It is powered by a giant 4,300 mAh battery, and has full support for Quick Charge 4.0. Internet connectivity is WIFI, and supports 2G and 5G. USB-C and OTG is an important element. You can attach Bluetooth accessories, such as a keyboard or optional USB-C enabled SD Card for enhanced storage. The dimensions are 249.5mm x 177mm x 7.1mm and weighs 376g.
The Kobo Elipsa features a 10.3 inch E INK Carta 1200 display, which is really new. It features a 20% faster response time and a contrast ratio improvement of 15% over Carta 1000. This screen tech was developed for e-notes in mind and reduces pen writing latency, giving a more responsive user interface, and enables animation.
Having a giant screen, still ensures that they resolution is quite respectable, 1404 by 1872 with 227 PPI. It has a front-lit display with white LED lights for lowlight environments and when it’s late, you can adjust brightness with Comfort Light to read and write at night or try out Dark Mode for white text on black. Easily adjust the brightness by sliding your finger along the left-hand side of the screen, for the perfect lighting in any setting. It does not have amber LED lights that provide a candlelight effect. One of the weird design decisions was the absence of amber LED lights for that warm candlelight effect.
Underneath the hood is a Quad Core 1.8 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. This is the first Kobo product that has a USB-C port, which is used for transferring data to your device and also charging. You can use the Kobo internet browser to surf the web, sync your documents and notes to Dropbox via WIFI 802.11 ac/b/g/n. It is powered by a 2,400 mAh battery, which should give you a couple of weeks of usage, before having to recharge it. The dimensions are 193 x 227.5 x 7.6 mm and weighs 383 g.
Here are the main differences. The Kobo has Bluetooth, but does not have the functionality to pair headphones or a speaker to listen to audiobooks. The latency when drawing, is better on the Elipsa. There is an integrated bookstore on the Elipsa, full of titles you would actually want to read, there is also Overdrive to borrow and read library books. Onyx, has Google Play, to download and install apps, which is a huge deal. There are various speed modes to increase the performance, Kobo does not even have an A2 mode. Onyx has the better stock drawing app, since it has layers. Kobo has more advanced features, such as the ability to solve math equations. The Elipsa has a better stylus, the Onyx one is made of cheap plastic.
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.
