Kobo Libra 2 | eReader | 7” Glare Free Touchscreen | Waterproof | Adjustable Brightness and Color Temperature | Blue Light Reduction | eBooks | WiFi | 32GB of Storage | Carta E Ink Technology | Black

This is my first e-reader. Overall, good device with high quality plastic and a very nice screen. I am happy with the product. It got stuck a couple times while looking up from dictionary. So, I had to restart the device. I believe Kobo will fix it soon.

I comes from kindle. And the kobo libra 2 just blow my mind. Its so much crispier. After looking at kindle screen for years now up to the latest gen, the kobo libra 2 display is the best one. Text are so crispier and less eyes strain.

after 5 months of light use, the battery can no longer hold a charge. went from 93% to 80% WHILE SLEEPING in just two hours. crashes all the time opening files bigger than 1MB. dont bother with this, and save your money. previous review highlighting differences between this and Kindle Paperwhite: it costs around the same as Kindle Paperwhite signature edition, so heres a comparison thats not a long boring novel: same for both: - 32gb storage - 7 screen - warm lighting functions minus for kobo: - no wireless charging - no automatic light adjustment (honestly who cares) - no automatic translation feature (a game changer on Kindle for anyone reading a book in another language!!) - FREEZES when opening large book files (froze on 100+mb epubs every time) -- very very disappointing. the last thing you want is to buy a book and not be able to read it. - no .doc/.docx support. honestly Kobo, what the cuss. business ppl want to read their files too. minus for Kindle: - no ergonomic BUTTONS for page turning, which is also a huge game changer. Kindle will accidentally go to next/previous pages often due to thin bezel and difficulty holding the device for a long time - no epub file format support. honestly Amazon, what the cuss. its like the most popular ebook format out there tl;dr -- if you dont read foreign/large books/doc files and NEED buttons/epub support, get the kobo. otherwise get the Kindle Paperwhite (pro tip: kids edition has no ads and sometimes have crazy sales), or maybe wait for the oasis update from Kindle. pro tip 2: invert the button so the top one is next page, makes a world of difference when holding one handed

I had a kindle and this is so much better! integrates directly with Overdrive, most of the books I have wanted to read have been available. You get about twice as much bang for your buck as with Kindle. The books are slightly more expensive but you arent locked into a specific store to purchase them.

This is my second Kobo device and Im very pleased: The screen quality is magnificent and the battery life is out of this world. I love that this device doesnt restrict me to one bookstore and that I can side-load e-books that I already own or use it to read e-books that Ive made, myself. Would I prefer a slightly larger screen (like my previous Kobo)? Yes. Is this screen too small? No. Do I prefer buttons to touch-screen? No. Do the buttons work well? Yes. Does the touch-screen work well? Yes. Do you need both buttons and touch-screen? No. Will I continue to purchase Kobo e-readers? YES!

UPDATE: Im increasing my rating from 4 to 5 stars after using for months. With software updates, the device has been very stable and a pure joy to read on. ORIGINAL REVIEW: Overall, I think the Libra 2 is a fantastic ebook e-reader, and I recommend it. There are a few things that knock off 1 star from a perfect rating, though. Hardware - The good things: - The screen is amazing. The text is very crisp and dark and the front light is very even (at least on my unit). - The warm light is very pleasing for evening/night reading and works very well. (The evenness of the lighting was ever-so-slightly not perfect with the addition of the highest setting of warm light, but not enough to be distracting). - The rounded corners of the grip side make holding it in one hand fairly comfortable. - The weight of the device is light enough that it can be held one-handed (without a case) in comfort for a while. - The battery provided me 20 hours of reading using very generous front-lighting (probably over 70% most times) (with Wi-Fi turned off). The battery reached 10% at that point and popped up a low battery message. Im not sure how this compares to other e-readers since manufacturers like to advertise in weeks instead of hours, but using their convention of 30 minutes per day, this would be about 6 weeks of reading between charges. - Its available in white, which is what I got, because it is very good at concealing fingerprints. - The power buttons location is well placed. It never gets accidentally pressed and is easy to feel for without looking, and it has a definite click to know that its been pressed. - The USB-C port is obviously nice to have (vs. micro USB). (Note: The included cable is a USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable, and no charger is included. So you will still need a charging brick with a Type-A port to use with this, and will need a Type-A port (or adapter) on your computer if you connect it to one.) Hardware - The not-so-good things: - The plastic case has a cheap feeling to the touch. It is not as nice as the more rubbery touch of the Kindle Paperwhite, for example. My unit even makes a slight creaking noise when squeezed gently near the corners. The embedded texture on the back helps make it feel a bit less cheap and does help to provide more grip when using without a case, but it still isnt pleasurable to the touch. Its just plastic. if you use a case while holding it, this wont be an issue. - The page turn buttons, whether by design or not, have an uneven pressure to them. If pressed toward the inside, it requires much more force to get it to click. If pressed toward the outside, only a light force is required. - When turning the front light completely off, the screen background is grayer (less white, less contrast) than other e-readers Ive seen (e.g. Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Oasis). (But with almost any amount of front light, the contrast is outstanding.) Hardware - One other thing: - The screen is slightly recessed. I personally prefer this to flush-screen e-readers. It doesnt have as premium a look, but it makes it very obvious to feel if the touchscreen is being contacted or not and prevent accidental touches. Software - The good things (common to all Kobo e-readers): - The interface is very well organized, clean, and simple to use. - The front light brightness can be adjusted with just a simple swipe up or down along the left edge of the screen, without first dropping down any menu and then having to close that menu. - The header can optionally show remaining pages in the chapter, which I find to be more useful than an estimate of how much more time is left, which can easily be miscalculated. - A subtle book progress bar is optionally displayed along the bottom of the screen. I really like this and prefer it to seeing a percentage. It provides a similar feeling to reading a physical book, where you can just tell how far you are in it, but without having to take any more screen space than necessary. - Kobos concept of pages: I really like the way Kobo software determines how many pages are in a book. It readjusts this number automatically based on the font size, margin settings, etc., so when it displays the number of pages left in a chapter, for example, you know that there are exactly that many page turns left for the settings you have selected for that book. I find this to be much more useful than Kindles way of showing pages, which is to correspond to the published physical book when possible. - Built-in Overdrive. Its nice to be able to check out and return books from the library right from the device. - Built in Pocket App support. I have not used this feature, but its nice to know I can read supported web articles on the Kobo if I want. - epub format support: Ive found that some of the classic literature is available in epub (but not Kindle) format, so I can borrow from the library without having to use any conversion software as I would on a Kindle. - Installing additional fonts is simple. Just connect to a computer, create a fonts folder, and drag the fonts into it. Software - The not-so-good things: - There are still some bugs (which will hopefully be fixed). My initial experience was not great. But all the bugs I found and list here were encountered during setup and configuration. I have not had any issue at all during reading sessions, which is what is most important. - Upon first powering up and connecting to Wi-Fi, after the device did an immediate software update and appeared to be finished with it, it became EXTREMELY laggy. It would take maybe 30 seconds to respond to actions. Rebooting resolved it. - The device has rebooted spontaneously while searching the Overdrive catalog and locked up completely a couple times (once while in sleep mode and once while changing a setting). - After connecting to Wi-Fi successfully, the device prompted me again for the password the next time I connected and again a third time. Only after that did it finally save the connection settings as it should. - When an Overdrive library book is returned, Kobos automatically download a preview copy from their store as a placeholder (supposedly to store annotations, bookmarks, etc, but also Im sure as a convenient way to purchase the book). Thats a bit annoying, and these can easily be removed after being downloaded, but one time it downloaded preview copies alongside their corresponding three library books I had checked out (that I had NOT returned and were NOT expired) and it erased all my progress in them. I have not tested any of the audiobook or bluetooth features. For me, I like the device so much that the issues I listed are easily acceptable. The bottom line is that it is very enjoyable to read on the Kobo Libra 2.

This Kobo is fast, very bright, and overall works well in day and bright mode. I preferred the text and screen overall to the Kindle Oasis and the battery life on both is great. However, that’s where it stopped. The Kobo is still bulky compared to the Oasis as well as feeling and looking cheap. The interface is much clunkier and generally annoying, and all of the features on this are available for the most part on the Oasis, but done better there. I ultimately returned after using it a week and went back to the (you guessed it) Kindle Oasis. It’s a shame that a brand new ereader can’t rival it’s two or so year old competitor.

Love it so far. A little slow on the PDF reading but overall a wonderful product!

Easy to work with, great screen. Love it so far.

I upgraded from a Kindle Paperwhite 2018 and for the most part it’s been a noticeable improvement. Starting with some of the cons I noticed: Screen ghosts a bit more than other e-ink screens I’ve seen but it doesn’t get in the way of anything and you can adjust the refresh interval for the screen. Overall fit and finish isn’t as good as the kindles, the plastic feels creaky and there is a noticeable gap between the back cover and the internals, but that’s negated by a case. It’s also noticeably heavier than other e-readers and even more so with the case on. Finally while it supports more file types than the Kindles, for the full feature set you have to convert books to the proprietary .kpub format so sideloading has an extra step in the process. But all of those I can easily live with. The screen is fantastic, crisp and high-contrast, text and illustrations really pop on it. Backlighting is also incredibly even and has a lot of fine control for color temperature and brightness. The Kobo UI is leagues ahead of the Kindle’s, simple to navigate and use and makes important settings easy to access while being snappy and responsive. If you need an e-reader and don’t care for Amazon’s ecosystem or want a cheaper alternative to the Oasis, this is your best option IMO.