How long do ebook readers last

Once you finish downloading books you do not need to maintain your Wi-Fi connection since your book is stored in your Kobo device. You can also improve battery life by keeping the brightness of the front light at a low level. If you use a custom-made Kobo case SleepCover, it will automatically turn e-reader in sleep mode when you close it and therefore save battery consumption. Kobo e-book readers, like every other e-book reader available in Canada, use e-ink screens to display text.

Reading text on the e-ink screen is like reading a real printed book. Another advantage of e-ink screens is that they consume much less power than LCD displays found in smartphones, tablets and computer monitors. E-ink screens require power only when turning the page while LCD screens require constant usage of power in order to maintain content on screen. That means that e-book readers consume much less power than tablets and smartphones.

That is a reason why Kobo battery lasts much longer than a battery in devices with an LCD screen. If the battery icon is black then the battery is fully charged. You can always check how much battery life is left on your Kobo e-reader.

You do not need to wait till battery completely drains. Physically, the Kindle and the Nia are similar but the Kobo device has a textured rear panel that makes the ereader feel more secure in the hand. The one complaint we do have is, for a device that launched in , it still doesn't have USB-C charging. Unlike the Kindle, there's no Bluetooth support on the Nia — a commonality shared by all the Kobo ereaders, even the premium ones.

That means the Nia lacks audiobook support, which even the base model of the current Kindle range has. So, if you're not keen on getting locked into the Amazon ecosystem, then the Nia is an excellent ereader for anyone on a tight budget. However, the Nia lacks a blue light filter, so if you read a lot at night, we think the Kobo Clara HD is a better option — with a sharper ppi screen — if you can spare the extra cash for it.

Read the full review: Kobo Nia. The Forma is Kobo's answer to the Kindle Oasis, albeit with a much steeper price tag. Like it's Amazon competition, the Forma has an asymmetrical design that's meant to make prolonged one-hand holding comfortable.

Where the Forma one-ups the Kindle — and perhaps attempts to justify its price premium over the Oasis — is by adding an extra inch to the display, for an expansive 8 inches in total. Despite the size disparity, both premium ereaders have similar weights, although the Forma's plastic body tends to lose its shiny look over time and use. The Forma's rubbery and textured back, on the other hand, means that despite its bigger size your grip never wavers and its bigger footprint helps keep that weight feel more evenly distributed.

You can hold the Forma in either your left or right hand or even in landscape and the display orientation automatically rotates within a couple of seconds of switching. This happens a touch slower than the Libra H2O which is a newer device but, compared to older Kobo flagships like the Aura One , it requires fewer full screen refreshes.

As is common with all Kobo devices from the last few years, the Forma's backlight offers color-temperature adjustment, so you can opt for an orangey-yellow light tone rather than the standard and potentially sleep-disrupting blue light, which can even be scheduled.

Unlike the Oasis, though, there's only a single 8GB version of the Forma available and it's admittedly the most expensive ereader from a popular brand. Despite that, it makes a case for itself by offering a superior user interface, OverDrive support, Dropbox integration for books stored in the cloud , and Pocket support for long-form web articles. Read the full review: Kobo Forma.

Whether you should opt for a Kindle or a Kobo ereader depends on what you're looking for from your ereader and, more often than not, that decision will be ruled by price and feature set. Both Amazon and Kobo have premium offerings in the Kindle Oasis and the Forma respectively, but there are budget ones as well. That said, Amazon has the biggest marketshare by far, but Kobo devices have several advantages over their direct competition.

So, which one is best for an avid reader? All Kobo ereaders have OverDrive baked-in, meaning anyone with a public library membership in countries where there is support can borrow ebooks from their local library. Most public libraries in the UK and Australia now allow members to borrow ebooks, saving you plenty of money in the long term on purchasing books. That said, the ability to borrow library books is also available on Kindles, but support is extremely limited and is only available to users in the US for now.

However, Kindle users can take advantage of Amazon's Prime Reading service — available for free to all Amazon Prime members. There's over a thousand titles to choose from, but you won't own the books you read via the Prime Reading service. If you're keen on owning all the books you read, then the Kindle Store usually has way more titles on offer than the Kobo Store — primarily due to Amazon's self-publishing platform — but Kobo's Super Points system allows you to save points you earn on purchases for later use note that these points do have an expiration date.

Another thing to keep in mind when choosing an ereader is the support for different file types. All Kindle ebooks you purchase from Amazon will be in. There is no.

Kobos, on the other hand, will support most file types — with the exception of Amazon's own. You'll even be able to read PDFs, text files, comics and graphic novels on your Kobo device, just to name a few. You'll find that the Kindles have some custom fonts designed by Amazon, with Bookerly and Ember being the most popular ones. We found that the list of fonts on Kindles is extensive enough that we didn't find the need to sideload more, but you can if you need to.

Kobo devices also have their own set of default fonts, but there's no rule against sideloading more, including Amazon's own custom ones like Bookerly. And sideloading is as easy as plugging your Kobo ereader into a computer and moving your desired font to the device's fonts folder.

While the Kobo Store has a large number of audiobooks, you can't listen to them on any of the company's ereaders — not even the expensive Forma. For that, you'll need to download the Kobo app on your smartphone or tablet. However, all the latest iterations of the Kindle devices Kindle 8th Gen, Kindle Oasis 8th and 9th Gen, Kindle Paperwhite 10th Gen have Bluetooth connectivity for wireless headphones and audiobook support for anything you get from Audible.

Goodreads is a great social platform for avid readers and, ever since Amazon acquired the company, there's seamless integration with Kindle devices available on the ereaders. It's a great and easy way to keep tabs on your library. However, integration with other platforms on Kindle devices stops there. Other than OverDrive support to borrow library books, Kobo also has a partnership with Dropbox.

If you happen to have your library saved in a Dropbox folder, you can easily connect the two and transfer files to the device without needing to plug the ereader into your computer. Then there's Pocket support on the Kobo devices as well.

This app allows you to read long-form articles on the web that you save for later, and syncing with your Pocket account will give you access to them all on your Kobo ereader.

There are some differences between the two platforms when it comes to the user interface as well — the main being the ability to organize your library on the device. While you can create folders and collections on both Kindle and Kobo devices, you can only organize ebooks you've purchased from the Kindle Store on an Amazon device.

If you've added books you've purchased from elsewhere, they will sit in the main library but you will not be able to move them to a folder. On the other hand, everything you have stored on your Kobo device can be organized as you see fit. Pretty much everything else about the two platforms is competitive, including pricing, so the choice of device ultimately rests on whether you'd like to borrow library books or if you're a Prime member, what file format the vast majority of your existing library is, and whether you'd like to listen to audiobooks when you're not reading.

At the end, you won't go wrong with either a Kindle or a Kobo, with both offering their own set of pros and cons. If you already own a tablet — either an iPad or an Android device — do you really need another device to read digital books on? Perhaps not, but there are a few advantages an ereader offers that you won't get with a tablet. Battery life Ebooks readers use far less power than a tablet, allowing manufacturers to claim days, if not weeks, of battery life.

And every single model listed above offers at least a few days of battery if you're an avid reader, which gets pushed to a couple of weeks at least if you're a casual reader. With tablets, you'll be doing a lot of other things besides reading, and they would likely need topping up every day. E Ink technology As mentioned above, every ereader on the market uses an E Ink screen with a matte finish, unlike the shiny reflective displays on tablets.

This makes it easier to use ereaders in bright sunshine, which can be a problem with some backlit tablet screens. Blue light filter While dark mode has become quite common in recent times and many modern electronic screens automatically adjust their displays depending on ambient lighting, there's no filter to reduce sleep-disrupting blue light. How long do you wait to upgrade an e-reader? Technology in E Ink devices tends to move at a glacial pace and some companies try to sell you on bigger screens, waterproofing, audio and a color temperature screen.

These features are important and ditto with Android e-readers embracing quad-core and octa-core processors and more hardware specs than you can shake a stick at. Try four years. Sometimes longer. They last forever. When I do my informal customer research walking down the aisles of airplanes, I regularly see devices we made in and