Kobo Libra Colour Review

The Libra's shape is its secret weapon. One thick side gives you a grippy bezel and two physical page-turn buttons, so you can read one-handed for hours without a single tap on the screen. Anyone coming from a button-less Kindle tends to fall for this fast. It is light, waterproof to IPX8, and the asymmetric design just works.

The screen is a 7 inch colour e-ink panel. As with every colour e-reader, colour is muted and the panel is a touch softer and dimmer than pure mono, but covers, highlights and comics all benefit. It also takes an optional stylus (sold separately) for light note-taking directly on the device, which the Kindle Colorsoft cannot do at all.

This is the real reason to choose Kobo. It reads EPUB natively, so your own DRM-free files just open, no conversion dance required. Library borrowing through OverDrive and Libby is built right into the interface in supported regions, which for library-heavy readers is a genuinely better experience than Amazon. Pocket integration lets you send web articles to it too.

The Kobo store is smaller than Amazon's and the software, while clean and pleasant, is a hair less polished. But if owning open files and borrowing library books easily matters to you, the trade is well worth it.

As a reader it is excellent: crisp text, a nice warm-adjustable frontlight, quick page turns and those buttons. The colour is a bonus for comics and highlights rather than a headline feature.

With the optional pen you can scribble notes and mark up documents. It is light-duty compared with a real writing tablet, but handy for annotating a book or jotting a thought. Do not buy it as a note-taker; buy it as a great reader that can also take the odd note.

Battery life is in the usual e-reader range of weeks per charge, with colour content and the frontlight drawing a little more. Charging is over USB-C.

At around 219 USD it competes closely with the Kindle Colorsoft. Buy the Libra Colour if you value open formats, easy library borrowing, physical page-turn buttons or optional note-taking. Choose the Kindle Colorsoft instead if you are already deep in Amazon and want its store and slightly punchier colour. For sheer flexibility, though, the Kobo wins.