A few days ago I posted about how a Ukrainian tech site recently tested the PocketBook Aqua ebook reader to see if it could withstand being frozen in a block of ice.
The device showed no ill effects whatsoever after being thawed out, and it turns out the same can be said for the IP67-certified Kobo Aura H2O as well.
A German ebook website, Allesebook.de, conducted a similar deep-freeze experiment with the Kobo Aura H2O.
The device was submerged in a tub of water and placed in a freezer for 16 hours to create a solid block of ice with the waterproof Kobo Aura H2O inside.
After a few hours of letting the ice thaw out at room temperature (the process has to be slow in order to not break the E Ink’s glass substrate), the Kobo ereader works just as good as before being frozen.
Notably the battery charge took a pretty big hit at that extreme of a temperature, dropping 17 percent while in sleep mode throughout the ordeal.
It’s pretty cool that the Kobo Aura H2O and PocketBook Aqua can survive being subjected to such extreme conditions. You can accidentally drop them into a lake or leave them outside overnight in a snow drift and they’ll still continue working just the same. Not very many mobile devices are that durable.
So what your saying is the H2O is Midwest Friendly now if only would test it in the inevitable leave it in your car in 100+ day in full sun and see if it survives. But then that’s what purses are for.
Hi, useful post, just to note that i have a kindle paperwhite (previous edition) bought as a present for my father and he just told me that for certain days with humidity the screen gets blarred and it is difficult to read. i do not know if anyone else has faced the same problem…
I haven’t heard of that happening before…
Not brave enough to try this myself.
I know what you mean. It’s an expensive device to risk damaging. I didn’t even want to stick mine in a tub of water to test if it was really waterproof, especially after breaking the Waterfi Kindle Paperwhite doing just that.
Well, this is nice that it can be in frozen water. But this winter that we had in NY with some of the windchills, my h2o screen actually broke while it was reading it at a bus stop. True the temp with wind chill was in the teens. It did get sluggish which I should have taken as a warning, but as I was reading black/grey lines started to form in the upper corners, and continued down about halfway down then stopped.
Upon getting to work where I let it sit hoping it was not going to stay that way for good. Alas 2 hours later it looked the same…
Oh well there goes 180 USD. After discussing this with a Kobo employee via a few emails – I was told that I dropped it.
So sending it back for them to check it was going to be a waste of 15 bucks there and 15 back – Kobo does not repair any of their products nor suggest a place that can. And me buying it directly from them with no additional warrentty services, I do not think I would buy their product again. Unless from a retail place like BestBuy/Amazon which I can get an extended warrenty in case something does happen to the item again.
Could it be because I was actually using the item in the cold instead of letting it sit in a frozen tub of water to freeze, who knows. Believe me or not it doesn’t matter as the item is tossed and a lesson learned
I will say that I did like the product greatlt and also had a nice thick padded case for it.
Seeing as how E Ink screens are so fragile, I can totally see that happening. It’s unfortunate that Kobo’s customer service is so bad that they don’t care and just try to say it’s your fault. That’s their answer to anyone with a broken screen; it’s like it’s totally inconceivable to them that an E Ink screen can break without some negligence on the user’s part. It’s ridiculous. If the same thing happened to a Kindle less than six months after it was released, Amazon would almost certainly replace it free of charge, and you wouldn’t have to pay a bunch extra shipping charges either. That’s one of the huge differences between Amazon and Kobo. Amazon’s customer service is top-notch, and they actually care about their customers being happy. Kobo does not.