Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Brief review: Kobo Aura HD vs. Kindle Paperwhite

With the flourish of digital content and electronic devices, more and more people are moving to eBooks and eReaders, including the aged who do not know much about computer. When talking about the best eReaders last year, most folks would recommend Kindle Paperwhite without hesitation. The answer might be different now, since Kobo has just released its brand-new HD E-ink reader, which is fully able to rival Amazon Kindle Paperwhite in many respects.

Tech specs
Kobo Aura comes with a decent 6.8 inch touch screen, marginally larger than the 6 inch screen of Kindle Paperwhite. The excellent 1440*1086 pixel resolution of Kobo Aura makes it stand out again, which overtakes both cognate eReaders (Paperwhite: 1024*768 pixel) and the most popular tablets such as Google Nexus 7 (Paperwhite: 1280*800 pixel). Speaking of processor, Kobo Aura runs a superb 1 G processor, together with a 4-G internal storage, which doubles Paperwhite's 512 M RAM plus the 2 G non-expandable storage. On the contrary, users are able to expand the storage of Kobo Aura with a SD card.

Formats supported
We know that Kindle Paperwhite only supports purchased Kindle AZW/TPZ/PRC/MOBI books and DRM-free PDF files while the standard eBook format is EPUB. When people want to read EPUB books from public domains, they will have to rely on format converting tools to convert EPUB to MOBI. Unlike Amazon Kindle serials, almost all other eReaders support EPUB format, including Kobo. Besides the previously supported formats (EPUB and PDF), Kobo Aura also takes the initiative to incorporate Kindle MOBI format. Another advantage of Kobo Aura is that people can read EPUB and PDF books loaned from public libraries, which are not accessible on Kindle eReaders due to the incompatible formats as well as Adobe DRM protection (Kobo Aura supports Adobe DRM).

Video Review
Here is an overall video review for Kobo Aura HD and Kindle Paperwhite.


Here is a night review for the backlight function of both eReaders.



The bottom line
For people whol mostly purchase eBooks from Amazon, Kindle Paperwhite will be a better option at a cheaper price of $119. Otherwise, Kobo Aura HD ($169.99) delivers better reading experience and faster processing speed with more formats supported.

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