A good e-reader feels like a small act of rebellion against the smartphone. It is slower, less colorful and spectacularly uninterested in helping you check your messages. The Kobo Libra Colour adds a complication to that lovely simplicity: a color screen. Happily, it also keeps the physical page-turn buttons that make the device feel like something designed for reading rather than a miniature tablet in disguise.
Kobo lists a seven-inch color E Ink Kaleido 3 screen, 32GB of storage, an adjustable ComfortLight PRO front light and an asymmetric body with page-turn controls. The color display invites comics, illustrations and highlighted passages into the familiar e-reader experience. The buttons, meanwhile, give your thumb something to do without requiring a precise tap on a slab of glass.
An E Ink device asks readers to make a trade. It will not behave like a bright, fast tablet, and color E Ink cannot be assumed to match an OLED display for saturation or responsiveness. That is largely the point. A reader may want fewer distractions rather than another general-purpose screen competing for attention.
It is tempting to regard physical controls as leftovers from a less sophisticated era. Yet the button solves a problem that gestures do not always solve gracefully. It gives the hand a fixed place to rest, and it turns the next page into a movement that barely interrupts the reading. Add color for covers, diagrams and comics, and the e-reader becomes more versatile without having to imitate the phone in your pocket.
The Libra Colour looks particularly attractive for people who read for long stretches and enjoy holding a device one-handed. Anyone whose library, purchases and annotations already live in another company’s ecosystem should first check formats and transfer options. For everyone else, the proposition has an old-fashioned charm: a gadget that gets out of the way and lets a book take over.
Further reading: product details.
