Rakuten Kobo recently announced its first-ever colour e-readers. The launch included two models, the Kobo Libra Colour and the Kobo Clara Colour.
The Clara Colour is a traditional style e-reader, while the Libra Colour incorporates a digital notetaking feature for annotating texts and jotting down ideas in colour.
Keep reading to learn how the Kobo Clara Colour compares to Amazon’s popular Kindle Paperwhite.
The Kobo Clara Colour has a colour display
The Kobo Clara Colour’s standout feature is its colour display. The 6-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 display is full-colour, making it ideal for flipping through comics and reading books with illustrations.
The colour display also makes it easier to view and organise highlighted passages at a glance as you can highlight words in various colours.
The Kindle Paperwhite has a slightly larger 6.8-inch 16-level greyscale display.
Both the Paperwhite and the Clara Colour support a sharp 300ppi output when viewed in black and white, with the Kobo dropping to 150ppi for colour.
Both e-readers support adjustable warm light, with the Paperwhite allowing you to set a schedule for light changes and the Clara Colour automatically reducing blue light throughout the day with its ComfortLight Pro feature.
The Kindle Paperwhite has a longer battery life
If you’re looking for an e-reader that will last a long time between charges, the Kindle Paperwhite is the stronger option. This is likely at least in part due to the fact there’s no colour display to drain the battery faster.
The Kindle Paperwhite offers up to 10 weeks of battery life based on 30 minutes of reading a day with wireless connections turned off and the light setting at 13. The Kobo Clara Colour can deliver up to 42 days of battery life based on 30 minutes of reading a day with wireless connections switched off and the front light set to 30% brightness.
If we assume the brightness settings used in these tests are similar, the Kindle Paperwhite offers a 67% longer battery life or 28 additional days of reading.
The Kobo Clara Colour weighs less in your bag
Both the Kobo Clara Colour and the Kindle Paperwhite are designed to be slim and lightweight, offering a more travel-friendly alternative to stuffing three paperbacks in your carry-on when you go on holiday.
The Clara Colour is the smaller and more lightweight of the two e-readers at 174g and 112 x 160 x 9.2mm. However, the Kindle Paperwhite is the slimmer of the two at 205g and 125 x 174 x 8.1mm.
Both devices are rated IPX8, making them splashproof enough to withstand some poolside reading.
The Kindle app has a larger library of books
If a wide variety of books and audiobooks is your priority, you can’t beat the Kindle’s library of more than six million titles (as of March 2018). Amazon hasn’t shared any official numbers since 2018, but it’s likely this number has increased over the last six years.
Kindle users can also visit Audible to purchase audiobooks, while the company’s Kindle Unlimited subscription allows users to access a wide array of e-books, magazines and audiobooks for a monthly fee.
The Kobo app, meanwhile, currently offers more than five million titles to choose from, along with a large collection of audiobooks.
