Last week I posted a comparision review between the base Kindle and the new Kobo Clara BW because they both have the same size 6″ screen and a similar overall design, but features-wise the Clara BW is more comparable to the Kindle Paperwhite.
The Kindle Paperwhite has a larger 6.8″ E Ink screen with an added flush layer, but it and the Clara BW both have warm frontlights and waterproofing, unlike the basic Kindle model.
The Kobo Clara BW has a newer generation Carta 1300 screen from E Ink, but you would never know it by looking at it. Both screens look so similar that I can’t say one looks better than the other, but the screen is faster on the Clara BW when compared to other Kobos. It’s still not faster than the Kindle Paperwhite though—both are basically neck and neck now when it comes to page turning speed.
I like the fact that Kobo still offers a fully-featured 6″ model instead of a watered-down version like the entry-level Kindle, and it’s smaller and more portable than the larger Paperwhite, but the Paperwhite does look and feel a bit nicer with the flush screen. However, it does come with the drawback of being a little more glare and fingerprint prone.
I do like the larger screen on the Paperwhite even if it hinders the portability factor a bit, and I think the frontlight looks better and is more evenly lit on the Kindle, but the frontlight on the Clara BW is pretty good too—there’s just some subtle bright spots and shadowy areas along the bottom where the LEDs are located.
The Kindle Paperwhite sells for $149 and the Kobo Clara BW sells for $129. On the surface that doesn’t seem like a big price difference, but the ad-free Paperwhite costs an extra $20 so the real price difference is actually $40, and the Paperwhite Signature Edition sells for $189 so it’s $60 more expensive than the Kobo, but it adds wireless charging, an auto brightness sensor, and double the storage space.
What! The KC BW has a screen that is not flush???
Will there be an updated version of this for the new 2024 Kindles? (Both Basic 2024 VS Clara BW _and_ Paperwhite 2024 vs Clara BW?) At the moment, all the blogs I’ve found are still from before the new Kindles released this month, while other newer ones only compare the 11th vs 12th gen. I’m coming from a (much) older device, so I’d like to know which new would be better choice overall.
I don’t know. I’d have to buy another Clara BW to do comparisons since I got rid of the first one because I wasn’t impressed with the screen at all. Other people seem to think it’s great but the contrast was clearly better on the Clara 2E so I wasn’t buying the hype, and it really annoyed me how Kobo says the contrast is better but in reality it’s not.