Kobo doesn’t offer anything as fancy as X-Ray on Kindle. The slate of reading extras on offer is pretty basic: dictionary lookup, notes, highlights, bookmarks, search in book, and sharing passages on Facebook. That means even if you have small hands, you won’t have to stretch your thumbs. If you want to just use your left hand, for instance, you can expand the area where it registers a tap or swipe for paging forward. This is useful if you tend to hold your e-reader in one hand. You can also change the tapping/swiping zones. You can adjust this to a different number in Reading Settings. Still, the Glo’s light is even and consistent across the screen and doesn’t suffer from the weird lighting issues that plague the Kindle and, to a lesser extent, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.įlipping pages takes a light tap or swipe and the page changes quickly with no flashing (when the screen goes black for a second) except every six pages. Even in very dark rooms, you’re better off keeping the slider set at the midpoint. The Glo’s light is harsher than the Kindle’s, even when you bring it down to a comparable setting. It’s brighter than the Kindle Paperwhite’s brightest setting, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better.

Luckily, you don’t need to turn the light all the way to 100 percent, even in dark rooms, as it’s very bright. It’s less evident on heavier fonts but gets more pronounced the higher the brightness. Turning on the light (Kobo dubs it the ComfortLight), the first thing we noticed is that it washes out text somewhat. You also get control over line spacing, margins, and justification so you can tweak everything until you find the perfect balance. There are eight font faces and 24 sizes, so you’ll have a wide range to choose from. Though the resolution is a decent 1024 x 758 pixels, the edges of letters sometimes don’t render as crisply as we’d like – again, depending on the font. Depending on the font, text is bold and dark, and even looks good when the font size is small. The Kobo Glo’s 6-inch Pearl E Ink touchscreen’s contrast ratio is very close to the Kindle Paperwhite, which is currently the best among this type of e-reader. It isn’t the most attractive or most elegant e-reader in the world, but it’s comfortable to hold in one hand and you can operate it without needing a manual. The only two ports are a microSD reader on the left edge that takes cards up to 32GB and a Micro USB port on the bottom for charging and connectimg to a computer. However, when the light is on, you can adjust the brightness on screen. Unlike the Kindle Paperwhite or the Nook with GlowLight, there’s no on-screen way to turn on the light.

There are only a few buttons: the power slider up top and a button for turning the light on and off. Like the Kobo Touch, the Glo is all touch-based. More than 5 billion mobile phones to become waste this year What is an eSIM? Here’s everything you need to know Image used with permission by copyright holder And it does still have a soft-touch coating that makes it comfortable to hold and harder to let slip. The Glo’s back is less pillowy than some models and isn’t removable, so you can’t exchange backplates, though you’ll be tempted due to the neon coloring. The Kobo Glo is about the same size and weight as the Kobo Touch and has the same basic design as every other Kobo e-reader that’s come to the United States. But is the Glo competitive with these more popular devices? In some ways, yes. For instance, the Kobo Glo costs $130, $10 more than the Nook and Kindle with lighted screens. That’s usually because the company’s e-readers are often almost great, but not quite, and are a bit more expensive. Like David Hasselhoff, Kobo e-readers are “popular in Europe” though not always considered real contenders in the United States. Text washes out when light is at full brightness

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