Rakuten Kobo has announced its first ever colour e-readers, the Kobo Libra Colour and Kobo Clara Colour, alongside the more traditional black and white Clara BW.
Both the Kobo Libra Colour and the Kobo Clara Colour are notable for featuring E Ink Kaleido 3 displays, which can switch from a regular 300ppi monochrome output to a 150ppi colour one. The latter mode promises to make up for a relative lack of sharpness to bring book covers and illustrations to life.
The Libra Colour display is 7-inches while the Clara Colour screen is 6-inches. Display aside, these e-readers look like fairly typical progressions of their respective models. All three have IPX8 certification, while the two colour models pack new faster 2GHz processors.
That latter spec could be the crucial addition here, even over the headline colour display, as previous Kobo models have suffered from slightly sluggish performance.
The Libra Colour is the more premium of the two colour models, with physical page turning buttons, Kobo Stylus 2 compatibility for marking up text and making notes, a larger 2050mAh battery (vs 1500mAh in the Clara Colour), and double the storage at 32GB. It also costs £199.99/$219.99 to the Clara Colour’s £139.99/$149.99. Meanwhile the Clara BW costs £119.99/$129.99.
All three models will be available from April 30, though you can pre-order now from the Kobo website.
