Kobo’s Elipsa and Sage e-readers are better for reading than writing

E Ink displays, with their extremist concise resolutions and black and blank limitations, have been a natural fit for replacing pen and newspaper publisher for years. It's no wonder that the most common uses of the display engineering in consumer engineering science has been for e-readers and digital paper, attempts to try to slash through paper's thousand-year hegemony as a dominant engineering for writing down info.

This year, Kobo took the logical step and combined the two with the massive, document-orange-sized 10.3-inch $399.99 Elipsa and its new flagship $259.99 Sage e-reader. Happening theme, IT's a great idea.

Kobo is by no way the first major company to offer an E Ink-based writing device: Sony has produced its digital paper tablets for age, and reMarkable is already on its forward-generation writing-focused device.

Just both Sony and important's tablets, which in theory encouraging ebooks, lacked the storefronts and existent customer buy-in to really deliver the goods as a viable e-reader, where the only elbow room to father books was to sideload whatever DRM-free ebooks you already had. The two parvenue Kobo tablets, on the other hand, propose the best of some worlds, combining Kobo's tasty Holy Scripture storefront and library lending support with the paper-ending artistry of an E Ink stylus system.

Neither gimmick quite a hits the balance, though. The smaller Sage-green is better to read with, with corporal turn buttons, waterproofing (although the stylus is not), and adaptable color temperature for more natural lighting. Merely the eight-inch display is awkwardly sized, going away the device overly big to fit into any drawers pocket (although it does fit into a jacket pocket), while simultaneously being a moment too cramped to comfortably write on, especially if you're looking at a full, alphabetic character-sized document. And unequal the Elipsa, it doesn't include a style in its $259.99 price, rather charging an special $40 for the favor.

The Kobo Sage excels as an e-reader, although the display is a bit cramped for writing.

The Elipsa suffers from the opposite problem: its bigger display lends itself more naturally to victimisation it as a integer paper tablet for annotating PDFs and scribbling notes in a notepad, simply information technology's more embarrassing to read on referable the unwieldy size. It's a great option for things like whole number textbooks, though.

Unlike its smaller cousin, the Elipsa isn't waterproof, and the display eschews the adjustable color temperature feature on the Sage, too. (I'd likewise beg Kobo to rethink the placement of the baron button on a prospective model — the new location, on the "right" side of the pad of paper, makes IT all just impossible to use when holding it in your right.)

In short, the better the device is for reading books, the worse it becomes for victimization A an E Ink notebook and vice versa.

The larger Elipsa is well right for sketching.

And while Kobo's handle on e-reader software system and technology is competitive, the member paper aspects of its ironware look distinctly first generation connected both devices. Kobo's choice to include an extra screen layer for its backlight substance that the writing isn't rather as respondent or tactile feeling as the reMarkable 2. Nor does Kobo have the rough, almost scratchy tactile airfoil that made the significant sol skillful to indite on.

The software also has some odd quirks, too. One of the more interesting capabilities of Kobo's devices is the fact that you can write on books — annotating, underlining, highlighting, and otherwise scribbling complete or around any you'atomic number 75 meter reading. If you'atomic number 75 the kinda individual who likes being able to do that screen of affair, it's a useful feature once you've already got the stylus backup (and unlike drawing on a paper book, it's easily erased).

Oddly, in that respect's no easy way to toggle annotations on and remove, squabby of dynamical the margins or baptismal font sized. Since annotations are tied to a taxonomic category page layout, changing display settings makes your scribbles disappear, replaced by an icon in the margins that makes it easy to revert rearwards to the germinal (annotated) settings.

There are also some inept limitations: while you can scribble on Kobo-purchased books to your heart's content, you lav't share those annotated books or pages. DRMed PDFs can't be annotated at all, which mightiness limit your ability to take notes on extremity textbooks, and library books borrowed from Overdrive testament recede their notes once you return them.

Kobo's software system oddities linger passim the device. Both devices, for instance, bear out landscape layouts for ebooks but not on any of the menus. And the software is poorly in pauperization of a smartphone-expressive style control tray for adjusting brightness and basic settings: right now, in the notebook computer mode, the only if way to control brightness is through and through a poorly advertised swiping gesture, instead than through any software fare. And the Sage doesn't even offer an choice to get to your notebooks from its homescreen, hiding the characteristic away in a substitute carte du jour.

The company is also still largely resting on its laurels when it comes to things like Pocket and Overuse integration, which, while better than Amazon's non-implementation of the two features, still could atomic number 4 a administer more drug user-friendly than they are. Kobo, presumptively, is fair-and-square small with customers buying books from its store rather than fetching them out from their local libraries.

The Sage-green's display can adjust its color temperature; the Elipsa cannot.

The key thing to understand about Kobo's cardinal new tablets, though, is what you're getting into ahead you buy. The Sage, contempt having style support, is still an e-reader first; and while the digital paper features are a nice incentive, I wouldn't buy unitary to use as a digital notebook. And while the Elipsa is an interesting appendage paper twist made better by Kobo's ebook infrastructure, it's shut up a first-generation piece of hardware that's inferior as a committal to writing tablet by the reMarkable 2.

Still, even if neither of the cardinal devices hits the sweet espy of a undefiled paper permutation, the fact that Kobo is looking at to flourish its feature band after-school of simply purchasing ebooks is an encouraging cardinal. Hopefully, information technology will continue to help push the industry forward into pickings air-filled advantage of the unique displays that devices like the Kobo Sage and Elipsa offer.

Photography away Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

Kobo's Elipsa and Sage e-readers are better for reading than writing

Source: https://www.theverge.com/22824803/kobo-elipsa-sage-e-readers-eink-stylus-review