Today Kobo unveiled a new ereader, the Kobo Touch Edition. As the name would imply, this one has a touchscreen, as well as some other upgrades over the previous model, the Kobo WiFi.
What’s great about the new Kobo Touch is that is uses Neonode’s zForce technology, the same touchscreen technology that the Sony Readers use, which has already proven to work great without any drawbacks. The touch uses infrared to detect a finger or stylus and doesn’t require an added layer over the display.
What’s more, the Kobo Touch uses the new higher contrast Pearl screens from E Ink, previously only used on Kindle and Sony Readers. It also comes with the new Freescale i.MX508 processor for increased speed and performance. There are four color varieties: Lilac, Blue, Silver, and Black.
Kobo Touch Specs and Features
- 6″ E Ink Pearl with 16 levels of grayscale
- Neonode zForce infrared touchscreen
- Freescale 508 Processor
- 1GB internal memory, with a mircoSD card slot for cards up to 32GB
- WiFi for downloading ebooks, newspapers, and magazines
- Supports EPUB and PDF formats, including Adobe DRM
- Kobo Reading Life, track reading stats and earn awards for reading
- Bookmarks, highlighting, dictionary, search
- 2 font styles, serif and sans serif, and 15 font sizes
- Image zoom
- Virtual keyboard
- Sync bookmarks and last page read across other Kobo apps and devices
- 200% PDF zoom, PDF panning, rotate to landscape/portrait
- Battery Life: 10 days, 10,000 page-turns
- Weight: 7.1 oz – 200 grams
- Dimensions: 6.5″ x 4.5″ x 0.4″ – 114 x 165 x 10mm
The new Kobo Touch Edition is available for pre-order in the US and Canada from Best Buy, Walmart, Indigo, and Borders. It sells for $129 in the US and $139 in Canada. Kobo says that the new ereader will start shipping in early June.
It’s getting better and better. Would be nice if they can add a note taking feature in there too. The highlight tool is a huge plus for me though.
I’m definately interested!
I agree. Notes are the one thing that it is missing compared to other ereaders. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kobo added that feature down the road, or at least a notepad function. It already has the virtual keyboard in place so it can’t be that difficult for the programers to add.
But still no web browser, which is a deal breaker for me.
Anyone want to take bets that the Nook 2 tomorrow will be a similar touchscreen e-ink affair?
Okay your specs and those from ereader info differ (http://www.e-reader-info.com/kobo-ereader-touch-edition), you say it has wireless, they say it doesn’t. Who’s correct I wonder?
The Kobo Touch definitely has WiFi. It’s listed on the specs page.
Hi, I’m new to your blog. It has been really helpful and has a lot of great information. I’ve been leaning towards the Kobo for awile now. I just want a ereader not a tablet and I’m not interested in color, surfing the web or anything. I don’t care about a touch screen either but I quess I’ll get the new model since it has some other upgrades.