I can’t put it down – the Kobo Clara Colour e-reader

A handy format, a colour display and long battery life. Exactly what I want from an e-reader. The Kobo Clara Colour delivers it all. The device also has special features for audio books and notes, albeit with limitations.

Display: E-Ink Kaleido for colourful markups

Kobo equips the Clara Colour with a 6-inch display featuring E-Ink technology. Visually, the screen comes much closer to paper than IPS or OLED. The technology also consumes considerably less energy. Kaleido 3 ensures up to 4,096 colours in the E-Ink display. The resolution is 300 ppi for black and white content and 150 ppi in colour. This change in resolution makes colourful content look a little less sharp, but it’s still fine.

The colours aren’t really bright due to the technology, but it’s still a nice addition. Marking the e-books with different colours is particularly useful. This works well with the touch of a finger and the display reacts quickly enough to the gesture. I can display markups in an overview in the book.

The display also has built-in lighting, so I can enjoy my evening reading even without a bedside lamp. The blue light component adapts to the time of day and dips into a soft orange until the set bedtime. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s easy on my eyes.

If it’s still too bright for me, the Kobo Clara Colour also has a dark mode. However, this only works when reading an e-book. If I open the settings or the bookstore, for example, dark mode doesn’t work.

Hardware: durable lightweight

The almost A6-sized Kobo Clara Colour has plenty of space. The 16-gigabyte memory can store up to 12,000 e-books or 75 audiobooks. Not bad at all for a device that weighs just 174 grammes – and is lighter than my smartphone as a result.

The Kobo Clara Colour has a 1,500 mAh battery. Doesn’t sound like much compared to a smartphone with an average of three times the charge, but thanks to e-ink technology, I can still manage two to three weeks without charging the little Kobo. This applies if I read for about an hour a day and rarely use Bluetooth or WLAN.

I can also read carefree on the beach or in the bath: the Kobo Clara Colour is completely waterproof. According to IPX8 certification, the e-reader can withstand for one hour in up to two metres of fresh water.

Set-up and use: internet required initially

The first time I use the Kobo Clara Colour, I have to connect it to a Kobo account. This is done either via a QR code that I scan with my smartphone or directly via the device browser. The latter runs rather sluggishly, so I wouldn’t recommend this option. I can then buy and synchronise the books I want using my smartphone or browser.

However, I can only buy books through Rakuten’s Kobo store. Still, I can always drag other e-books and files onto the Kobo Clara Colour in the appropriate format. These include: EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR.

As the e-reader is slightly smaller than a normal paperback, I increase the font size a bit. I can do this with a two-finger gesture or via the settings. There, I can also customise the font, margins and so on. Increasing size works well and quickly here. It’s a different story with comics. I have to enlarge the pages individually so that I can actually read text. And the Kobo Clara Colour has much longer loading times for images than for text pages. This massively disrupts my reading flow. Only Japanese mangas are still within the bounds of what is reasonable. They have a similar format to the Kobo Clara Colour and are mostly black and white.

I particularly enjoy reading because of its handy size and light weight. I’m immersed in the story and barely notice that I’m holding a digital device in my hand. This is how it should be.

Further functions and accessories

If I just want to listen instead of reading, I can connect speakers or headphones via Bluetooth and select an audiobook from the Kobo store. There’s no jack socket for wired headphones, and the e-reader can’t play audiobooks from other providers.

A web browser is also available. However, it runs extremely slowly, I’d only use it to browse the internet when it’s really necessary.

Among other features, I find a notepad. This is kept minimalist and can only be operated with a finger. I can only scribble all over a page with one type of brush, then save this as an image. However, I don’t see it being used for anything more than a spontaneous shopping or to-do list. I can only roughly write and draw with my finger, and the features are severely limited. The Kobo Clara Colour doesn’t support pens.

Rakuten also provides me with a matching sleep cover for the device. It offers all-round protection, can be folded and set up. The cover doesn’t make the device unnecessarily thicker or heavier either. However, at 34 francs or 31 euros, I think the price is a little high. Rakuten also offers cases without a stand for the e-reader for 10 francs or euros less.