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Kobo Arc tablets boast meaty specs for reasonable prices

Kobo has a range of new tablets including a 10-inch model with a super high-resolution screen and the latest Nvidia Tegra 4 processor.

Andrew Lanxon Editor At Large, Lead Photographer, Europe
Andrew is CNET's go-to guy for product coverage and lead photographer for Europe. When not testing the latest phones, he can normally be found with his camera in hand, behind his drums or eating his stash of home-cooked food. Sometimes all at once.
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Andrew Lanxon
2 min read

Kobo has a new bunch of tablets and a new E-ink e-reader to tempt your fancy and with solid specs and decent prices, they might just have a shot.

The most exciting of the bunch is the 10-inch Kobo Arc 10HD. Its display has a stonking 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution -- that's well above Full HD -- which should give some seriously crisp images. Under the hood is the latest mobile processor from Nvidia, the Tegra 4. It's a quad-core chip with a nippy 1.8GHz clock speed. I haven't had a hands on with Arc yet, but my experience with Tegra 4 on other tablets has been excellent.

The 10-inch chap also boasts a battery life of 9.5 hours in normal mode or "more than ten days" in something Kobo calls "reading mode" which presumably involves throttling the processor for less demanding tasks. The Arc 10HD will be available for £300 from WH Smith's from 16 October.

If you want something a bit more portable, check out the Kobo Arc 7HD. This 7-inch slate has a full 1,920x1,200-pixel resolution, putting it right alongside the new Google Nexus 7. It's using the older Nvidia Tegra 3 chip, but how the two stack up side-by-side remains to be seen. Prices start at only £160 for the 16GB model, or £190 for the 32GB version, both of which will also be on sale from 16 October. Both the 7- and 10-inch Arcs have full access to the Google Play store for apps, movies and books.

If you want a more typical ereader, the Kobo Aura has a 6-inch E-ink touch-enabled display. Like Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite, the new Aura has an illuminated display, allowing you to read text in the dark. It's tied to Kobo's own digital bookstore which has over 4 million titles to choose from. It'll set you back £120 -- a little more than Amazon's £110 Kindle -- and will be available from 16 September.

Do Kobo's tablets float your boat? Are you keen to get your hands on a super high-res Tegra 4 slate? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or over on our Facebook page.