even if you do n’t borrow from libraries, this is a cover girl device. The Clara HD is the e-reader boiled down to the essentials : a crisp screen in an easy-to-hold body with long barrage life and a comforting, color-changing front man light. american samoa long as you do n’t have an existing library of Amazon books, this is a better buy than the Paperwhite .
Kobo is a big distribute in several countries outside the US, most notably Canada. It runs its own ebook store, which recently had everything we looked for that is n’t published by Amazon. It works with Overdrive books from public libraries, and supports a wide-eyed image of other formats natively : EPUB, PDF, RTF, text files, JPEGs, CBR, and CBZ, for books and documents you find around the web. If those are the files you read, the Clara HD is the lector for you .
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Reading: Kobo Clara HD Review
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Small and Sleek
The Kobo Clara HD, at 6.3 by 4.3 by 0.3 inches ( HWD ) and 5.9 ounces, is significantly smaller and lighter than the Kindle Paperwhite ( 6.7 by 4.6 by 0.4 inches, 7.2 ounces ). It has the same 6-inch, 300ppi E-Ink Carta screen as the Paperwhite and the Barnes & Noble Nook GlowLight 3. It ‘s deserving mentioning that its 300ppi resolution is slenderly sharper than Kobo ‘s last-gen e-readers, which were 265ppi. 
The back is slenderly tapered, with a stipple convention that makes it comfortable to grip. I put the Clara HD in a $ 39 leather SleepCover, which feels terrific, protects the subscriber, and acts as a rack. The might button is the only physical button on the Clara HD. Unlike the GlowLight 3, there are no physical page-turn buttons ; you tap the side of the screen to turn pages, which is fine. The Nook ‘s page-turn buttons are pretty firm anyhow ; for very pleasing physical buttons, you have to go all the way up to the $ 249 Amazon Kindle Oasis .
The Clara HD ‘s color-changing front man light is a great strength. You can shift it from energizing blue to restful jaundiced, and anywhere in between ; it can besides shift automatically based on the time of day. The Barnes & Noble Nook Glowlight 3 does the lapp thing, but Amazon ‘s placid committed to serving you blue light only .
Battery life is great. After reading Sylvain Neuvel ‘s new “ only Human ” and volume 6 of the manga “ Yotsuba, ” I still had more than half the battery to go .
unfortunately, the Clara HD is n’t rainproof. none of the e-readers available at this price luff are, but given that Kobo pioneered water-repellent e-readers with its H2O models, it would have been nice to see. You ‘ll have to jump up to the $ 179.99 Kobo Aura H2O for that .
The Clara HD besides does n’t support audiobooks, but neither do its competitors in this price range. For audiobooks on an e-reader, once again, we suggest the Kindle Oasis .
Reading Experience
Kobo ‘s drug user interface feels like the Ubuntu of ebook readers. It ‘s very basic .
The Clara HD connects to the internet using 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. You can download books using the Kobo Store choice on the main menu ; it besides tries to recommend books to you, and did pretty decently discovering my taste. You can besides drag books over into its 8GB of storage using a micro USB cable television, and I had no trouble doing so from a personal computer or a Mac. Along with books, you can sign into a Pocket account and read any article stored in Pocket on the e-reader. That can be a lot of fun .
You can arrange your books into collections of associate titles. The default view is a simple list. Tap into a reserve, and you ‘re reading, in 10 different fonts with a wide variety of sizes and weights. Tap on words, and you can highlight or annotate them, get dictionary definitions, or plowshare quotes to Facebook. You can add bookmarks, pop over to the table of contents at any time, and in Kobo-purchased books, you can get stats on how far you are through the book .
so, Kobo has the basics, and handles them well. It does n’t go closely deoxyadenosine monophosphate deep as Amazon does in adding supplementary material to books—there ‘s no roentgenogram keeping lead of characters and plots, and you do n’t have Amazon ‘s deep Goodreads consolidation. But a lot of Kindle readers do n’t use those features, anyhow .
The Clara HD handled Kobo-purchased, PDF, and EPUB books well, including tables of contents. weirdly, Kobo-purchased books do n’t have overall foliate numbers, equitable numbers within chapters. EPUBs downloaded from elsewhere show page numbers .
We tried several manga and comics on the Clara HD, in PDF and CBR formats. Page flips on big PDFs are a little slow—CBRs are much faster—but in general, we ‘d advise the Aura H2O for your manga reading, because the 6-inch shield here is barely a little excessively belittled. The problem is text size, not clarity .
Borrowing, Not Buying
It used to be awkward to borrow library books with Kobo, but a September software update changed everything .
If your library uses Overdrive, you can enter your library card number in the device ‘s Settings and then see your local library integrated into the Kobo memory. You can browse the library ‘s virtual shelves or search, right on the device. If a book is available, you ‘ll see a Borrow with Overdrive option, and it will be wirelessly downloaded. You can besides use your library or Overdrive ‘s locate to browse and download books, and they ‘ll sync mechanically. If a bible is n’t immediately available, you can place it on hold. On the family screen, you see precisely how many days you have left before you have to return it .
There ‘s one minor fail : If you ‘re a member of multiple library systems ( like I am ), you can lone sign into one at a prison term on the device. inactive, though, this is great. It ‘s better than the Amazon interface, which requires you to use your library ‘s site to send the book to your e-reader. I downloaded Nancy Isenberg ‘s “ White Trash, ” and the format and internal connect was arrant .
Comparisons and Conclusions
Some people are library readers. I think more people should be library readers. If you ‘re a library reviewer, your Kobo becomes a magic trick extension of your library system.
The Kobo Clara HD is an easy, light, and childlike way to read ebooks. It slips into a pouch, its 300ppi sieve is acuate, its battery life is fantastic, and its color-changing battlefront light wo n’t keep you up at night. Unlike Barnes & Noble, which is in desperate corporate fiscal straits, Kobo is owned by very stable elephantine Rakuten, which besides owns the party that rents out all of your library ‘s ebooks. And Kobo has the best overdrive library reading experience of any e-reader .
That said, Amazon and Apple own 92 percentage of the ebook market in the US, and Amazon has besides become one of America ‘s largest publishers. You ca n’t read Amazon or Apple ebooks on this e-reader. That means we ca n’t kick Amazon ‘s Paperwhite out of the Editors ‘ Choice category entirely. But now it has to share with Kobo .
Kobo Clara HD
4.5
Editors ‘ choice
See It
$ 122.77
at Newegg
MSRP $ 129.99
Pros
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Cons
The Bottom Line
The Kobo Clara HD is the best all-around e-reader for anyone who borrows books from public libraries .
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