In a month where we’ll likely see just about every ereader on sale at some point, Walmart is kicking things off with a discount on the Kobo Sage.
Right now the Kobo Sage is listed at $229 on Walmart’s website. That’s $30 off the regular price of $259, which is what it’s selling for from everywhere else, including Kobo’s website. It’s not a huge discount by any means but that’s about as good as it gets when it comes to sales on Kobo’s ereaders, even during Black Friday.
The listing says it’s being shipped and sold by Walmart, not some third-party seller, as is the case sometimes, so returns will be easy if needed, and Walmart is Kobo’s official US retail partner.
The Kobo Sage is Kobo’s premium ereader that also supports writing with a stylus pen, but one is not included. Kobo’s stylus sells for $39.99, and other MPP styluses will work too.
The Kobo Sage has an 8-inch E Ink Carta 1200 display with 300 ppi, plus a frontlight with temperature control, and it has a flush front screen and page-turn buttons.
The device has 32GB of storage, a quad-core CPU, a USB-C port, a rotation sensor, there’s support for dual band WiFi and Bluetooth for audiobooks, and it’s also waterproof. It has DropBox support built-in as well for transferring files wirelessly.
The Sage was released in October of 2021 alongside the Kobo Libra 2, which is basically a less expensive, smaller version with an indented screen and no stylus support.
I must say, I have really loved my Kobo Sage, which I did get on a sale. The screen is so lovely with the increased contrast and sharpness.
Battery, while not as good as my Forma, is decent enough and the reader recharges much quicker than the Forma does. Dropbox access is so nice, as is USB-C! And I love the official magnetic cover as well. It’s been a win for me, even though I still find the Forma slightly easier to hold.
Agree,
My screen is flawless.
Could someone please let me know if the stylus can be used on side-loaded books, for example, from the public library?
Sideloaded yes- I don’t know about library books
Thank you, Steve! I borrow a lot of ebooks from the library.
It’s a shame its screen substrate is glass. I fear we’ll never see again another good ereader with plastic substrate. Bad for clumsies…
Yeah, there aren’t any new models using plastic unfortunately. Even the new $600 Onyx Tab Ultra is glass-based. E Ink recently announced a new partnership with Sharp to make indium gallium zinc oxide backplanes, whatever that means, but it doesn’t sound like they’re more durable either.
I keep wondering about the plastic Mobius substrate.
I have it on the Forma, but one thing is sure, the screen is less sharp than both my older Kobo Aura One and the newer Sage. So maybe that’s why it’s not as popular, because more people prefer the sharpness/contrast of the glass substrate? Just a conjecture, based on comparing the screens.
And while the glass substrate is fragile, I’ve owned a LOT of e-readers (a full dozen) since 2011 when I got my first, and not one has ever had a broken screen. At least two of those e-readers got dropped and still were OK. One of which, my first e-reader, not only fell, but had me landing on top of it on concrete and I’m no lightweight! (To be fair, the reader was in my bag at the time, and also had a case on it.)
So from that standpoint, while the Mobius plastic substrate is less fragile, if other people have had similar experiences as myself with the durability of the glass substrate, it may just be less of a sell point, particularly if sharpness is less.
MY NAME IS CAROLYN WILBURN AND JUST PURCHACE KOBO SAGE AND I AM HAVING SO MUCH TROUBLE TRYING TO TRANSFER MY BOOKS FROM MY KINDLE FIRE TO MY KOBO SAGE, I TRY THE DROPBOX AND STILL NO LUCK. I AM ABOUT TO SEND IT BACK TO KOBO EREADER BACK BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW ANY WAY TO DOWNLOAD MY BOOKS AND I WENT ON KOBO AND DOWNLOAD DIFFERENT WAYS TO DOWNLOAD BUT NO LUCK.
Kindles and Kobos use different DRM for ebooks so they aren’t interchangeable without a lot of technical work.