It’s time for another round of sales on Kobo ebook readers, and the deals are pretty good this time.
If you’re looking to get an ereader with a larger screen and page buttons, the Kobo Sage is on sale for $229.99 at Amazon with free shipping. That’s $30 off the regular price of $259.99.
That’s actually a really good price compared to similar models when you stop to think about it. The 32GB Kindle Oasis is $299 without ads and it has a smaller 7-inch screen. And then there’s the 7.8-inch Nova Air from Onyx for $349.
The Kobo Sage has an 8-inch E Ink Carta 1200 screen with warm and cool-colored frontlights. It has a quad-core CPU, 32GB of storage, a USB-C port, it supports dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and it’s waterproof. It also supports notetaking and drawing using a stylus, but it does not come with one. The Sage supports Dropbox as well, unlike the lower-cost Kobo models.
The Kobo Clara HD is on sale for $89.99 on Amazon too. It has a 6-inch screen and no page buttons, and it’s the older version of E Ink Carta, but it does have a frontlight with adjustable color temperature.
The Clara HD has been on the market for four years now so it’s probably close to the end of its run, but $89.99 is still a good price for an ebook reader with a 300 ppi E Ink screen and a warm frontlight. It normally sells for $119.99.
The Kobo Clara HD has 8GB of storage, a single-core 1GHz processor, Wi-Fi, and a micro USB port. It’s not waterproof and it doesn’t have page buttons like the larger Sage, but it’s small and portable and only weighs 166 grams.
They are on sale on Amazon Mexico with a 12% discount.
Did they ever fix the Sage’s battery life being terrible?
Scratch that, I was confusing it with the 10 inch reader they put out recently!
No, it is the Sage that has poor battery life, but maybe it’s gotten a little better with recent firmware updates. I haven’t been using it enough to tell.
My battery life seems to be ok, not great, not quite as good as my Forma…but IMO a flawless screen and one of the best dark modes(far better than Oasis, Paperwhite or Forma) more than make up for it.
I received my Sage on Thursday. I agree that the battery life is not good. I bought the charging cover and I don’t think that is so great either. I received the cover on Friday and have had to charge it four times already. It discharges quickly even when it isn’t attached to the device. I don’t know why Kobo didn’t just put a larger capacity battery in the Sage. If they were worried about adding weight to the device with a larger battery – adding the charging cover does the same thing and doesn’t make any sense. The Sage – however has a beautiful screen and the larger size is great which to me makes the wonky page turn buttons and battery life something I can overlook. However, I still hope they put out a new Elipsa with the warm light and 300 dpi.
I finally bit. Looking forward to my Sage arriving this week.
My eyes are getting increasingly sensitive about reading on a light screen in a dark room and I’m looking forward to trying out Sage dark mode for night reading. It won’t replace my Forma, which I *love* for the light weight and ergonomics, but will complement it instead. Or so I hope!
Thanks for the sale heads-up!
My Sage arrived, and so far, I like it.
Ergonomics are not quite as good as the Forma. It’s a pity Kobo dropped that bit of turned-up edge by the buttons, as with that, Sage and Forma would have been ergonomically equal other than weight. I walk around reading with Forma, but probably wouldn’t with Sage.
I was worried, because I broke both wrists a few years ago, and have had some chronic tendinitis issues from an old repetitive stress work injury, but Sage has not been a problem to hold.
The lighting uniformity is not quite as good as my Forma, as the lighter strip by the LEDs is somewhat more pronounced on Sage, but I think it will be OK. It may, like Forma, be visible only under certain conditions.
The screen contrast is definitely better than Forma, noticeable and nice. I was reading with ease with a lower light setting then usual this morning, around 30-35%, where I’m often at 35-40%.
Performance is noticeably snappier as well.
I tried the dark mode. It *might* be a little easier on my eyes, but I had to go through ALL the device fonts before settling on Amasis and then taking ALL weight off that in advanced settings. I was able to read a little longer, but I had to increase font size a LOT to make dark mode work for my eyes at all, so it’s hard to say whether I was able to read more pages than usual. Dark mode might be a bust, I’ll see how it goes.
Sage either came with or updated to the latest firmware during the process of setup and sync. Getting set up was easy-peasy. And good timing, as my Forma was due for a battery charge! SO EASY to download my current read from Dropbox, go to the epub page number I’d left off at and resume reading on Sage!
In the official green magnetic cover Sage is one beautiful package, just GORGEOUS!
As for battery, I charged it to 100% yesterday before starting set up, it was at 64% this AM. But there was a LOT of fiddling trying to get dark mode right last night and a fair amount of reading between yesterday evening and right now. Battery is new, I expect it to improve after a few charge cycles. Front light at around 30-35%, WiFi off. Screen refresh is currently set to every chapter. Have not noticed much ghosting, YAY!
Thank you for your review! Mine is suppose to come today. l need the larger size and love the Elipsa, but I really need the warm temp light due to eye sensitivities. I truly wish Kobo would add that to the Elipsa.