The Kobo Elipsa came out on June 24th and many of the people who placed pre-orders should have them arrive this week. Various retail partners, such as Chapter Indigo in Canada will have them available in the store and available online. Walmart in the United States will not have the Elipsa in any of their stores and will only be selling it online. The main Kobo website removed the pre-order text and new orders can be placed and shipping is quick.
The Elipsa is the first product in their portfolio that is not aimed at casual readers, but professionals. This device is designed for digital note taking and is fairly expensive.. It comes with a capacitive stylus that is designed to edit ebooks, PDF files and freehand draw. Complex math equations can be solved automatically and it also has a advanced handwriting to text engine. Of course, the Elipsa taps into the entire Kobo ecosystem of digital content, you can read all of your favorite books, comics or graphic novels. Overdrive integration ensures that you can login to your local library branch and borrow ebooks. This is also Pocket, to read your favorite blog articles and Dropbox to save your edited PDF files and drawings.
We reviewed the Elipsa a couple of weeks ago and were completely satisficed with this new product category that Kobo is entering. They do have their work cutout for them, there is lots of entrenched competition from Remarkable, Onyx Boox, Boyue, Supernote, Fujitsu and others.
Will you buy the Elipsa? Have you received your pre-order? Do you think this is a good direction for 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.
