Amazon has a bit of a hold on the e-reader industry. Like Kleenex did with tissues before it, Kindle has become so synonymous with e-readers that it’s easy to forget there are other brands out there. That’s a bit of a shame, because it’s only with companies like Rakuten that you’ll find more experimental features like color e-ink.
Rakuten’s latest e-readers, the Kobo Libra Colour and the Kobo Clara Colour, aren’t the first color e-readers to hit the market. But since Rakuten is the Pepsi to Amazon’s Coca-Cola, they offer a familiar, Kindle-like form factor and an extensive e-book ecosystem. They’re a prime example of the kind of innovation a second place manufacturer needs to make to stick out, but their niche use cases and multiple drawbacks show why Amazon has yet to follow suit.
Why color e-ink?
There’s more to the Kobo Libra and Clara Colour than their color screens, but the screens are certainly the standout difference here, especially because Kobo is the biggest e-reader company to use a color screen thus far. For most devices, buying the color version has always seemed like a no-brainer. A color TV can display more lifelike imagery, and a color Game Boy can give the player clearer visuals. For e-readers, upgrading to color isn’t so clear cut.
That’s because books are, for the most part, black-and-white anyway. Dune will read the same on paper as it does on Kindle as it does on a computer monitor, barring each medium’s individual quirks. You’re not losing out on information by going for black-and-white, except maybe on the cover. That’s why Rakuten’s been focusing on two use cases in its marketing for the Kobo Libra and Clara Colour: comics and notetaking.
The first is pretty cut and dry. Most western comics publish in color, so reading them on a black-and-white e-reader just isn’t comparable to reading them on a tablet or on the page. It won’t make much of a difference for manga readers, since those stories usually publish in black-and-white anyway, but color e-ink finally makes e-readers viable for fans of Marvel and DC. It should also help with more traditional books that have color elements, like textbooks, children’s books, or cookbooks.
The second is notes. The Kobo Libra Colour also functions as an e-note, meaning it has a notebook feature for use with a compatible stylus. Color e-ink allows note takers to jot down doodles and handwriting in multiple colors, or for highlighters to mark up e-books with proper color coding. (The Clara Colour does not work with a stylus, but still has color highlighting.)
Overall, color is the type of feature that won’t be necessary for many users, acting more as a bonus than a must-have. Still, if you can afford it, why not spring for the option to use it when needed, right? Well, the downside is that the inclusion of color e-ink here causes standard black-and-white content to look worse.
How does color e-ink work, and what are its problems?
Rakuten’s color e-readers use a 7-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 display, which means they work much like a traditional black-and-white e-reader, but have an additional layer in their screen that produces color by filtering content through a red, green, and blue mosaic that is too small for the human eye to resolve. By controlling which pixels shine through where, the e-reader can produce up to 4,096 colors and up to 16 levels of grayscale. More traditional tablet screens can show billions of colors, so you’ll definitely sacrifice some vividness, but the result will look more like a printed page than an iPad or computer screen.
Unfortunately, the color filter’s presence raises a number of issues for black-and-white content, especially when it comes to having a paper-like display. Chief among these are contrast and the rainbow effect.
While most modern e-readers come with a front light, to get a truly book-like experience, you’ll want to keep the light off and read with a lamp. With a black-and-white e-reader, this isn’t much of an issue, but color e-readers suffer from a lack of contrast, especially with their light off. This means text can tend to blend into the background, even if you point a lamp right at the screen.
That’s because a color filter generally darkens the display even when it’s not being used, as your content still needs to pass through it. The background will just never be a perfect “paperwhite,” as Amazon likes to say, even with the front light on. Turning on the front light will help considerably, though, and is recommended for comfortable reading (as for why it helps when a lamp doesn’t, proximity to the screen and evenness of coverage certainly play a role).
Whether that’s an issue to you depends on what you want out of these devices. For some, needing to use the front light is an immediate red flag, going against the whole premise of a digital book. For others, the content being displayed with physical pigment rather than LEDs is enough.
Regardless, there’s no escaping the rainbow effect. While the color mosaic is too small for your eye to make out the individual red, blue, and green dots, it’s not invisible, either. This means you’re likely to see grid-like artifacting in some of your content, ranging from a slight glittery texture in the background to a full-on spectrum of color.
None of this is unique to Kobo, but it’s important to note before buying that, unlike other devices, a color screen is more of a lateral move on an e-reader than a straight upgrade.
What are the Kobo Libra Colour’s specs?
While companies like Boox and Pocketbook have previously released color e-readers, Rakuten is the largest company to do so yet. That means the Kobo Libra and Clara Colour come with full access to its extensive store and intuitive UI, plus they work with the optional Kobo Plus subscription.
Rakuten knows how to make an e-reader, and when it comes to the basics, the Libra Colour, which is what I tested for this review, is excellent. Its 1,264 x 1,680 resolution means text is never fuzzy, its 2,050 mAh battery can last weeks at a time before shutting off (I never dipped below 90% while testing), and its front light is both plenty bright and can display various levels of warmth.
It’s also comfortable in the hands. Being a premium e-reader, the Libra Colour comes with an extended side panel with buttons and an ergonomic grip, giving you something to hold onto like with a Kindle Oasis. The Clara Colour doesn’t have this side panel, and though I didn’t get a review model for it, if it’s like past Rakuten e-readers, it should be about as comfortable to hold as equivalent Kindle models without a side panel.
There’s also Bluetooth support for headphones and audiobooks, but maybe the best reason to opt for a Rakuten e-reader over an Amazon one is that it gets you out of the Kindle ecosystem. That means a wider support for e-reader formats, including EPUB, which makes it easier to share files across devices and read free content. Kindle notably does not include EPUB support, and while there are ways to convert unsupported files for reading on Kindle, they don’t always work out. It can also be difficult to convert Kindle files for use on non-Amazon e-readers.
Throw in an extensive default font library and a large print mode for visually impaired readers, and it’s clear Rakuten made about the best color e-readers it could.
The question, then, is if color itself is worth it.
Testing the Kobo Libra Colour
It’s hard to really visualize the pros and cons of color e-ink without trying it out in person, so I tested a number of titles—including traditional books, comic books, and manga—on both the Libra Colour and my personal current generation Kindle Paperwhite. Technically, the premium Kindle Oasis would be a fairer comparison, although it’s been discontinued (and I don’t have one). Still, the Paperwhite’s display is comparable in size and resolution.
Starting with what I’ve been reading lately, I preferred Dune on the Kindle. My fiancé and I disagree on this, but it all comes down to the rainbow effect for me.
He says he doesn’t notice much of a difference, but whereas I see a smooth background while reading on the Kindle, the Kobo looks like Edward Cullen standing in sunlight to me—glitters everywhere. Yes, even with the front light off, since the rainbow effect is more of a matter of how the screen reflects ambient light than anything else. There’s a “reduce rainbow effect” option in the Kobo’s settings, although I didn’t notice much of a difference with it on.
I also appreciated that the Kindle made it easier to read without a front light, but what will likely matter to you more is how sensitive you are to the “texture” of the page. My fiancé likes to compare the glittering to the grain on real paper, but it seems far too uniform to have the same effect for me. In certain lighting conditions, reading plain text on the Libra Colour almost feels like reading on graph paper. It’s possible, but distracting enough to be night and day next to a purely black-and-white e-reader.
Onto something that actually takes advantage of the color, I read a number of comics across both devices. I’m of two minds here.
First, I was impressed by the image quality. For color content, the Kobo has to cut its PPI (pixels per inch) in half to achieve its effect (meaning less dense pixels), but everything still looks like it’s been drawn on the page. There’s occasional jagged edges that don’t show up on more traditional screens, but for the most part, the look is natural and detailed. It’s pretty special, too—short of real paper, there’s nothing else like it. A modern Kindle can do this as well (older models had issues with resolution), but without a color screen differentiating hues, color comics blend together so much that they’re pretty much illegible (assuming you would even want to try to read a color comic in black-and-white).
That gives the Kobo Libra Colour a key advantage, in that it’s a viable way to read content that the Kindle struggles with. But even with content that should be its bread and butter, the Kobo Libra Colour still falters in key respects, which means it may not necessarily be better than more traditional tablets.
The most obvious is in how vivid its colors are. While E Ink’s Kaleido 3 display promises 30% more saturation than previous iterations, everything here will still look a little dull and a little on the darker end. Older comics, which also had limitations on what could be printed on physical paper, fare better here, but bright and colorful modern works suffer a bit.
That tradeoff might be worth it for those who love a hand-drawn look, but there are two things that truly stopped me from enjoying comics on the Kobo: text size and accessing my comics library.
It depends on the comic, but for stories with lots of text, the 7-inch screen just isn’t enough to easily read it. Kindles have a “panel view” mode that allows them to load images on a panel-by-panel rather than page-by-page basis, but there’s no such solution on the Kobo. The best you can do is zoom in manually with pinch motions or a slider, but the screen’s limited refresh rate can make this a slow process, which can be extra difficult if your comic doesn’t have uniform pages and you need to adjust the zoom for each new page.
Maybe more annoying is that, because Kobo devices don’t use Android, you won’t be able to access any of the popular comics reading apps on the Libra Colour. I like to catch up on old comics using Marvel Unlimited, DC Infinite, and the Shonen Jump app, and none are available here. Instead, the most convenient way to get comics on a Kobo is to buy them piecemeal off the Kobo store, which is a much more expensive proposition. You could sign up for a Kobo Plus subscription, but then you’re locking yourself into what’s on the Kobo store, which may not be as extensive as what’s on publishers’ official apps.
Alternatively, because of the more open format compatibility, you could sideload comics from elsewhere, but you’ll still need to get your files somewhere, which will probably cost you a pretty penny at some point (assuming you keep things legal).
Granted, Kindles also have this issue, but they don’t market themselves as comics readers. Even so, they might be a better way to read black-and-white comics, which is what I tested next.
Reading Sailor Moon and Berserk on both the Kobo Libra Colour and my Kindle Paperwhite, I noticed some familiar issues rear their heads again. Notably, the rainbow effect was maybe more noticeable in these titles than in plain text.
That’s because the artifacting, when layered over a character’s face, can come across less as page texture and more as a straight-up defect. In negative space, it can bloom into full-on rainbows rather than small glitters.
None of these issues were present on my Kindle, which, unlike with color works, is a pretty great way to read black-and-white comics. While turning the Kobo’s “Reduce Rainbow Effect” mode did actually seem to help here despite it not helping much with text, it also made images appear fuzzier and generally unpleasant to look at. Overall, the Kobo’s comics superiority doesn’t keep up when it comes to manga and other similar content.
Finally, I wanted to test the Libra Colour’s Dual 2.0 GHz CPU with a PDF, something that would require frequent zooming and reconfiguring. It wasn’t a great experience, which is to say, it was about on par with the Kindle and every other e-reader I’ve used. Don’t get an e-reader for PDFs.
Draw in color
There are a few benefits to color e-ink that come outside of the direct reading experience, and while none of them are system sellers, they’re all certifiably nice to have.
The most extensive update comes to highlighting and other types of markups, as the Kobo Libra Colour is able to draw notes and make highlights in various colors, both in documents and in dedicated notebooks. There are four color options for highlights (yellow, pink, light blue, and light green) and ten for drawings (black, red, brown, yellow, dark green, light green, pink, light blue, purple, and gray), as well as multiple options for pen size. The Clara Colour does not work with a stylus, but it can still highlight in color.
The Kobo Libra Colour is not the first or only Kobo with e-note features, but markups are still snappy here, and the notebooks feature is robust, giving you the option between blank pages and ruled pages that can be populated with digital text and diagrams in addition to written notes and drawings. When starting with a blank page, you can also choose from backgrounds including anything from a grid to a storyboard layout, although you’ll need to start with a ruled page for help with diagrams.
Note that to use notebooks or draw in documents with the Libra Colour, you’ll need an MPP compatible pen. The Kobo Stylus 2 costs a princely $70, but third-party alternatives like the Renaisser Raphael 520 can go for much lower.
Pocket integration also benefits here, and is a unique advantage over the Kindle, as while the Kindle Scribe at least allows for black-and-white e-notes, all Kindles need to rely on older “Send to Kindle” tech for reading web articles. On the Kobo Libra Colour or Clara Colour, you can simply save an article using your phone’s Pocket app, then automatically find it on your Kobo later. And thanks to the color e-ink, you’ll be able to better appreciate any of the article’s art. There’s Google Drive and Dropbox integration as well, which are features also missing on the Kindle.
Menu navigation is also just generally a little nicer on the Kobo, as all of your book thumbnails will show up in full color, making them easier to navigate. Again, when reading a traditional book, you’ll be spending most of your time in black-and-white, but there’s less friction here for when you start reading.
Is a color e-reader worth it yet?
The Kobo Libra Colour is a solidly made e-reader that nonetheless shows that color e-ink just isn’t there for most people. Far from being a strict upgrade, it is instead more of a lateral move, with niche use cases and severe compromises in black-and-white content.
The ideal audience for the Libra Colour is someone who reads a lot of color comics, especially those that are light on text, and who also likes to take a lot of notes. Younger readers would probably do well here, enjoying picture books and text-light comics on the device, although it could also be good for students thanks to its more colorful notebooks system and Pocket integration.
Unfortunately, readers of traditional books as well as black-and-white comics will have to put up with a number of annoyances on the Libra or Clara Colour, including low contrast, occasional artifacting, and the rainbow effect. If you’re like me, you read a good mix of content, but these downsides might not be worth being able to read color comics on your e-reader.
That said, the Kobo Libra Colour is about as good as a color e-reader can get right now, at least for a traditional, Kindle-like format. Alternatives from companies like Boox do offer larger screens and Android support, which can help with some pain points for comics readers, but they’re significantly more expensive. Also, while Android does give access to more comics apps, it can be generally slow to navigate with e-ink.
The truth is that there’s no perfect solution for color e-ink at the moment, so if there’s anything to take away from this review, it’s that it’s not as obvious an upgrade as color TV was. Still, there’s also nothing quite like it if you’re willing to deal with some compromises in exchange for spectacle. If you have limited space on your shelf for physical comics, or if you just generally prefer the convenience of an e-reader, the Kobo Libra Colour is a great way to read those stories digitally while still getting a hand-drawn look: something that undeniably feels special no matter how many asterisks you attach to it.
The Kobo Libra Colour costs $220 while the Clara Colour costs $150. For comparison, the current Amazon Kindle Paperwhite starts at $150.