A lot of recent Kindle defectors want to crown Kobo as the saviour of ebooks and ereaders, but I’m not sure if Kobo is truly up to the task of competing with Amazon, because, like usual, it doesn’t look like they’re putting any effort into it whatsoever. Eventually some of the deserters will be forced to head back to Amazon after they get tired of Kobo’s apathetic approach.
Kobo used to regularly release software updates for their ereaders to add new features, but over the past few years the frequency and quality of Kobo’s updates has seriously declined. Now they just release a couple of minor “bug fix” updates a year, and when they do add new features they’ve started leaving older models out.
The last major software update to get released happened back in June of 2023, and that was mostly just a notetaking update for older models to add features that were added to the Kobo Elipsa 2E when it was released.
Before that, you have to go all the way back to 2022 when they last improved PDF support by adding a zoom lock feature. That’s also when they finally added pinch-zooming to change the font size, which still doesn’t work right.
Over the weekend I decided to do some reading on the Kobo Libra 2, and I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t turn on out of sleep mode when pressing the page buttons, and then I finally realized it doesn’t support that feature. Kobo added the option to wake the Kobo Libra Colour by pressing the page buttons nearly 6 months ago, but they still haven’t added that feature to their older models, and they haven’t released a single software updates since then.
I also think it’s odd how they officially added Dropbox and Google Drive support to the Kobo Libra Colour, but they never added that to older models like the Libra 2. Apparently new features are only for new customers.
My Kobo Libra 2 also has an annoying font bug that I’ve been waiting for Kobo to fix for the past year, but I guess that’s never going to happen. I finally decided to do a factory reset to see if that would fix it, but no, the font type still keeps reverting to a different type on its own for no apparent reason, but at least now it seems to be limited to the supplemental font type after deleting all custom fonts except one.
I wish Kobo would put more effort into taking Amazon down a few pegs, but Kobo seems to be content to be a background singer that few people have ever heard of outside of hardcore fans. With all the things that Amazon does to anger Kindle customers, you’d think Kobo would do more to capitalize on Amazon continually finding new ways to alienate customers, but instead Kobo keeps slacking off on software updates, while doing zero advertising and rarely doing sales or promotions, and refusing to release a new black and white Libra to compete with Kindles. It’s a puzzling strategy, to say the least. Being owned by Rakuten, you’d think Kobo would have enough resources to put more effort into taking a bigger slice out of Amazon’s pie, but they really don’t seem to care, especially when it comes to the US market.
While I agree that sometimes they seem to be asleep at the switch…never considering trade-ins, “real sales”, I find their basic software to be great. Love pocket integration as my preferred way to real online articles at my convenience. Generated page numbers instead of location I will take any day. Incremental font sizes and margin control are fantastic. So far, I have not any major glitches on my Forma or Sage. Not sure what new features are left…although a good AI text to speech would be fantastic.
I admit the issue you had would be highly annoying for me. Yep, they miss low hanging fruit. That said, they did catch media attention with the Libra Color. How many actual units they sold…who knows.
“I find their basic software to be great.”
Generally I agree, but I think it stinks that to get two columns in landscape mode you have to reduce the font size to something small, which in my case makes it unusable. I don’t understand why they didn’t do something straightforward, like on Kindles.
And how many Kindle’s updates say nothing about what’s change?
Kindle has room to grow more features. They are “user friendly”, not customizable.
I would be really happy if they add some similar features what koreader has, so we don’t have to tinker with the device just use the default reader.
I like koreader, but it eats up the battery on kobo devices, sometimes I have to charge my Libra 2 after every book if I read long ones.
I haven’t tried Koreader yet. What features you like that regular Kobo or Kindle doesn’t have?
In summary: I really like the more customizable features in the reader: margins, header and footer etc (a ton more compared in default and patched kobo). Tap zones: I can one tap to switch wifi and dark mode (which is truly a dark mode and even puts the GUI in dark mode, not only the book’s text). But you can customize the hell out of this. Alarm for reading and battery percentage.
Slide on the sides not just for the light, but amber light too. Built in Calibre wireless connection. Faster page turning, profiles (you can have several profiles, which can one tap apply a sort of customizations on the book). For example I have separate profiles for sci-fi books, fantasy books, non-fiction etc, with different fonts and formatting.
Gestures: this is a really strong one. You can apply any gestures to almost anything (turning stuff on and off etc)
Battery and book statistics are over the top.
The GUI in the other hand is more like a file browser, but it’s made to be the least in the way in your reading session and experience. Kinda similar like when you use your default kobo in sideloaded mode, as there is no “home screen” just the library.
One downside is the bit heavier battery consumption, but at the same time the UI and page turning is a bit faster.
It’s really disappointing that there are hardly any options if you’re looking for a decent B&W e-reader. The Kindle ecosystem is closing, Kobo has abandoned B&W readers and doesn’t update its software. What alternatives are left? There are Chinese readers running on Android, which feels like a total overkill and is uncomfortable for reading, and then there’s Pocketbook, which is barely available and has a slow, buggy software.
I wouldn’t think that kobo is abandoned BW readers. Currently you can buy 3 BW readers and just 2 coloured ones. Last update for every kobo came out in October. Yeah, the updates are less frequent, but still. I think the lack of adding features is the main issue here. But this was the same thing 10 years ago as well, nothing really changed.
Amazon didn’t really add anything meaningful to their software for existing ereaders in years. They do release updates regularly, but most of their software changes lately are crippling their devices, removing functionality or fixing bugs. Reading progress sync hardly ever works for sideloaded books anymore, before it was covers missing, Kindles freezing all the time and so much more problems. With every update I worry what will be broken next.
Nothing like that happens with Kobo. They drop updates sporadically, but 99% of time they just work. Plus Kobo is still lightyears ahead of Kindle software. Amazon can’t add even something as simple as brightness regulation with gesture. Oh and their font, margins etc settings are just a bad joke.
The only thing missing on Kobo is Send to Kindle really. I get that you have a blog and lack of updates means you have nothing to write about, but majority of people don’t care about this, they’re just happy to have much nicer ereaders that Amazon can ever make.
It doesn’t always have to be a Kindle vs Kobo thing. Amazon has been slacking off on adding new features to Kindles for years too. Both could be a lot better in that regard. They used to both add new features regularly, but things have really fizzled out over the past few years.
I love Kobo devices. The only thing I wish they had was the time display somewhere small like Kindles. When you are reading on a time constraint it would be nice to see the clock instead of having to bring up the menu and then exit out.
They should make it an option. Just one tap at the top of the screen does display the time though.
Agree – Amazon gives the option of showing the clock or not. I wish Kobo offered the clock the same way. Kobo light control keeps you in the book – for the clock tapping the top of the screen takes you out of reading where a glance would not.
You can have this with installing Nickelclock. But yeah, it just doesn’t make sense why they couldn’t add this by default in the past decade.
I switched from Kindle (having used it since the Kindle Keyboard) to Kobo after one of the major UI updates made collections basically unusable for me because scrolling through them constantly slowed down the Kindle until it basically crashed. After a few days’ worth of reorganizing my ebook collection into Calibre and syncing to Kobo, I ended up liking my Kobo more than I liked my Kindles (although yeah, I do miss Send to Kindle, and I miss the Kindles’ preview of a bookmark before you jump to that page). I’m now seriously considering jumping skip to Boox, however, because my Kobo keeps freezing in the middle of me reading and then restarting, for no apparently reason, sometimes a few times pretty close together, and it forgets whatever progress I’ve made in my current book since I last opened it (although it keeps bookmarks and notes made before it crashed). It’s getting pretty damn annoying since I think at this point it happens at least once a day, usually more. And yes, I’ve tried resetting it and that didn’t fix the issue. Now I’m just waiting to see what Boox releases this year, since I really want to wait for an updated Android version before switching over…