Kobo pulled the veil off their latest ebook reader today, the much-anticipated 7.8-inch Kobo Aura One.
It won’t get released until September 6th but pre-orders start on August 30th (kind of a weird way to announce the release a new product—make people wait 2 weeks before they can order it).
Nevertheless, the Kobo Aura One product page is up at Kobo.com with a full description and a list of specs.
The list price is $229 USD, and $249 CAD.
In addition to the larger E Ink screen, the Kobo Aura One also features an ambient light sensor and an auto-adjusting frontlight designed to filter out blue light as the day turns to evening, much like a number of apps for Android and iOS.
Another really cool addition is integration with Overdrive to download ebooks for free from public libraries directly without having to use a computer and Adobe Digital Editions. This applies to public libraries for residents in North America, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
The device is also waterproof, even more so than the Kobo Aura H2O, with an IPX8 rating, which means it’s waterproof for up to 60 minutes in up to 2 meters of water.
Another impressive detail is the fact that the Kobo Aura One only weighs 230 grams. That’s actually 3 grams lighter than the smaller Kobo Aura H2O—impressive. However, they’re skimping on the battery to achieve that lower weight since it has half the overall battery life as Kobo’s other ereaders, even the low end ones (up to 1 month versus 2 months, using some contrived ereader battery life math that doesn’t make much sense to begin with).
Check back next month for a full review and some comparisons! There’s also a new 6-inch Kobo Aura as well (I posted a separate article about it).
See the press release for more details.
Kobo Aura One Specs
- 7.8” HD Carta E Ink display.
- 1872 x 1404 screen resolution (300 dpi).
- Waterproof for up to 60 minutes in up to 2 meters of water; IPX8 certified.
- Frontlight with ComfortLight PRO to reduce blue light.
- 8GB internal memory.
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.
- Supported formats: Adobe DRM, EPUB, EPUB3, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR.
- Battery Life: up to 1 month.
- Languages supported: English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Brazilian, Portuguese, Japanese, Turkish.
- Weight: 230 grams.
- Dimensions: 195.1 x 138.5 x 6.9 mm.
- Price: $229 USD.
“kind of a weird way to announce the release a new product—make people wait 2 weeks before they can order it”
Yeah, but it’s much better than Amazon when they used to announce a product months before any initial stock. Even now, they never seem to make enough stock to satisfy initial preorders. I think that’s more frustrating.
$60 Cheaper than the Kindle Oasis with better specs all around and no ads? Wow, that’s impressive. Wonder if Amazon realizes how bad they are robbing people. This will be an immediate purchase for me, thanks for the details..
Very nice, cool to hear about ComfortLight filtering out blue light as well. I’m still wondering whether it uses the new i.MX 7 processor – do you think they would advertise that in the official specs? Not going to stop me from getting this e-reader at some point either way though, definitely enough of an upgrade for me compared to my aging Kobo Aura.
Yeah, they’re still using the same 1GHz i.MX 6 SoloLite processor and 512MB of RAM as before…
Yeah, that’s bad.
Otherwise it had been perfect.
I am still happy with my kobo Aura HD but sometime I may upgrade to One.
Will get one of the one’s asap. UK Price £190.
Only problem I can see Kobo have nano coated usb socket does that mean they have a matching usb lead as well?
If its been in water and you plug in lead when usb not dry what happens?
Does anyone know anything about its screen’s substrate? Is it plastic or glass? I guess is plastic because its limited weigh
It’s definitely glass. If it were plastic it would be much lighter than that even. The plastic-based Wexler Flex One one weighed like 100 grams and the much larger Sony DPT-S1 only weighs like 350 grams. Plus the 8-inch inkBook 8 weighs about the same at 25 grams more. The reason the weight is lower than expected on the Aura One is it has a smaller battery with half the battery life compared to other ereaders. By the convoluted ereader battery life math of up to one month reading 30 minutes daily that’s only 15 hours of battery life. That’s not very impressive. Tablets can last that long nowadays.
I’m disappointed. Too much large device in a such weak building
I don’t like the decision to make it lighter at the expense of battery life. Longer battery life is a big advantage that e-readers have over tablets. Take that advantage away and there is much less incentive to purchase a more expensive e-reader instead of a cheaper tablet.
The USD/CAD exchange rate is currently 1.28, meaning Kobo is price-gouging US customers.
Thanks, Kobo.
Then just order it from Chapters in Canada like I do. At $249 Canadian and even with $20 extra for shipping it’s still cheaper than ordering from Kobo in the US, like $210 total.
Nathan, does Chapters (shipping to U.S.) charge tax on such items?
No, they certainly aren’t going to collect taxes for residents of a different country.
I wonder if they (Chapters) will accept pre-orders a week ahead, like Kobo. Or do we have to wait until they’re in stock, Sept. 6th or later.
The press release says that Indigo will have them for pre-order starting the 30th like Kobo. I’ll post an article when they make them available.
Oh no… I just spotted this notice in my Amazon sellers’ account (dated 8/25/16):
“A potential Canada Post service disruption in the next few weeks may impact shipments to, from, and within Canada.”
I haven’t read up on what the nature of the issue is, but sounds like Chapters/Indigo orders could be affected, right?… bad timing!
I’m not clear on whether (ordering directly from) Kobo involves shipping from Canada as well.
I wouldn’t worry about it. International shipping probably won’t go through Canadian Post if it’s a problem. They could use Fedex, UPS, etc.
What a joke! In Europe it costs 260 USD…
grrrrr…..
I’m considering the purchase of a Kobo Aura One. But I wonder if I will be able to read the thousands of ebooks that I have so far purchased from Amazon.
DRM is not a problem. Neither is converting between MOBI, EPUB,PDF AZW
Comments?
The software doesn’t get updated. Does anyone knows whether it allows you to extract highlights and notes out like what the kindles can do. Amazon kindles like Chinese translation. I have been waiting for me from kobo but it never happens. The vocabulary builder in the kindles is really a useful feature. The kobo looks good but I am waiting for those features for a long time but it never happens.
In some of the reviews posted online, I’ve noticed a criticism of the lack of web browser. To be clear, I’m not at all interested in in surfing, but I am very keen to access e.g., a Calibre web server, Feedbooks, Gutenberg, etc..
From TechCrunch:
“Of course, the device’s inability to offer a half-decent web browser experience is either a pro or a con, depending on who you ask. After all, keeping this a purely readerly experience means completely ditching all of the social notifications and other distractions — as if you don’t already have all of the info pushed to enough devices already.”
Does anyone have any information as to whether Kobo completed removed the Web Browser from the device altogether?
It still has a web browser. They’re just complaining because it’s not as fast or as functional as a web browser on a tablet or phone. I wouldn’t put much stock in those type of “reviews” done by people who don’t even use ereaders in most cases anyway. They are paid to do reviews of all kinds of products and they rarely know what they are even talking about when it comes to this kind of niche stuff. They use it for a few hours at most then post a review and never use it again, so they aren’t exactly experts…
Being a Kobo I assume there will be huge margins on all four sides so that you end up using maybe 6 inches at best.