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Kobo Glo review: A worthy Kindle alternative

While the Kindle and the Nook get all the notoriety, Kobo's new Glo is an impressive e-reader that also features a self-illuminated screen. And unlike the Kindle, it supports books bought from multiple online stores.

David Carnoy Executive Editor / Reviews
Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, including headphones and speakers. He's also an e-reader and e-publishing expert as well as the author of the novels Knife Music, The Big Exit and Lucidity. All the titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, Nook e-books and audiobooks.
Expertise Mobile accessories and portable audio, including headphones, earbuds and speakers Credentials
  • Maggie Award for Best Regularly Featured Web Column/Consumer
David Carnoy
6 min read

Barnes & Noble calls the integrated light in its Nook Simple Touch e-reader a GlowLight. Amazon dubbed its self-illuminated Kindle reader the Paperwhite because it aimed to approximate the look and feel of real paper. Now Kobo has introduced a new e-reader, the Kobo Glo, which also has an integrated light. Kobo calls it the ComfortLight.

7.9

Kobo Glo

The Good

The <b>Kobo Glo</b> is a lightweight, Wi-Fi-enabled e-reader that has an impressive front-lit, high-res e-ink display with a touch-screen interface. It also features an expansion slot for additional memory, supports EPUB files, and is compatible with any e-book store that uses the Adobe DRM format.

The Bad

Kobo's selection of e-books lags behind Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's. Loading library loaners and third-party e-book purchases requires tethering to a PC.

The Bottom Line

The Kobo Glo is an excellent Kindle alternative, especially for readers seeking EPUB compatibility and international options.

The Glo, which lists for $129.99, also features a 1,024x768-pixel-resolution, 6-inch e-ink display (yes, it's a touch screen) that Kobo says makes text and images appear crisper.

Like the Nook and the Kindle Paperwhite, the Kobo Glo uses front-lighting technology and has a thin layer film on its screen that aids in dispersing the light uniformly. Like the Paperwhite's, the Glo's screen is illuminated from the bottom rather than the top of the unit (as the Nook's is), projecting the array of tiny LED lights upward instead of downward.

Sarah Tew/CNET

When Kobo first announced the product, I was a little skeptical that the hardware and lighting scheme could match up with the Kindle and Nook devices, but after using the Glo for a few weeks I have to say that its built-in light is basically on par with the Paperwhite's and offers slightly more uniformity than the Nook's built-in light. In all, this is a very solid e-ink e-reader that has a few unique features not found in other e-readers. Just don't expect the Kobo Store -- and the breadth of Kobo's offerings -- to be on par with Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's offerings.

Design
The Wi-Fi-enabled Glo is a touch smaller than the Paperwhite, both in terms of dimensions and weight, coming in at 6.52 ounces. Overall, its design is pretty straightforward, even slightly generic (at least from the front), though its textured back panel, which has a sort of argyle pattern and comes in various colors, gives it a bit of flair. My review unit was white with a blue back, but you can also get the Glo in black.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Like the Paperwhite, the unit has no physical page-turn buttons (a lot of people like the fact that the Nook has them). You turn pages and navigate the device fully by touch. The Glo uses the same IR-based touch technology that's found in the Nook Simple Touch and Sony PRS-T2. It works well; the screen was generally responsive to my touches.

A the top of the device you'll find a power button, as well a dedicated button for turning the ComfortLight on and off. I like that there's a dedicated button for the light -- the Nook GlowLight has a dedicated button while the Kindle Paperwhite does not -- but I also don't mind that the Paperwhite doesn't have one.

The Glo has a couple of ports: a Micro-USB connection at the bottom of the device for charging (you get a cable in the box but no AC adapter) and transferring files, and a microSD expansion slot on the left side of the device for adding more memory beyond the 2GB of internal memory (1GB usable for storage). The Glo accepts cards of up to 32GB.

There's no headphone jack, however, since the Glo, like all of the latest e-readers, leaves out any sort of audio option.

Sarah Tew/CNET

As part of the launch, Kobo has redesigned the user interface, and it's now more inviting and straightforward. I had no problem accessing settings or navigating the device in general. You can quibble over how Kobo uses the space on the home screen (there's some unused space), but that's a minor gripe.

Features
Aside from the built-in light, Kobo's done some interesting things with the fonts on the device. It's added new fonts that are optimized for the screen's higher resolution, and you can really customize how the text is displayed on the screen, with the ability to change the margins and justification. I didn't find the contrast incredibly good -- the letters aren't inky black but more of a dark gray -- but the text is sharp at smaller font sizes, which is nice. That's where the higher resolution is a big boost; that, and cover images.

The other unique customization feature is the ability to adjust how often the screen refreshes, aka flashes, to clear the ghosting inherent to e-ink. You can have it refresh every page turn or less often, down to every six page turns. For those who don't like the flashing, you'll want to stick with six. But if you don't mind the flashing and are more irritated by the ghosting artifacts, you can set it to refresh more frequently.

The Kobo Glo (right) and smaller Kobo Mini (left), which doesn't have an integrated light but costs only $79. Sarah Tew/CNET

Kobo's Reading Life social reading features, and Kobo Picks, which makes reading recommendations based on your feedback and preferences, are also included, along with standard features such as a built-in dictionary with 13 different language options. Yes, the Glo is an international device, so you can change its "base" language to one of several options. You can also highlight words and sentences and add annotations. Standard fare for an e-reader these days, but it's there.

As far as what files the Glo accepts, it's considered an "open" device with support for EPUB files with or without DRM copy protection. You can buy EPUB e-books from any EPUB-compatible store (so not Apple, not Amazon) so long as you install Adobe Digital Editions on your computer. The same goes for library e-books: they have to be manually transferred over to your device. In contrast, many libraries now allow you to send files directly to other e-readers such as the Kindle.

Kobo does have apps for Android and iOS, so you can sync books bought via the Kobo Store across multiple devices just as you can with the Nook, Kindle, and Sony Reader. However, as noted, the Kobo Store simply isn't on par with the Kindle or Nook e-book stores and Kobo doesn't have an e-book lending option or anything like Amazon Kindle Lending library, which allows Prime members to check out certain e-books for free (one book title per month). Amazon also has other small but useful features such as "Send to Kindle" plug-ins for browsers that allow you to send articles directly to your Kindle.

Performance
Overall, the Glo's performance was decent enough. As I said, the touch screen is responsive, maybe not quite on par with the Paperwhite's but close, and page turns were relatively zippy. As with all e-ink devices, there's some lag, and extras such as the built-in Web browser work but not well.

As I said in the intro, the light is pretty impressive and can be adjusted with an onscreen slider. At its brightest setting, it's very bright in a dark room, so you'll want to turn it down to midlevel or maybe even lower. While there's a touch of cloudiness at the bottom of the screen where the LEDs are, it's no worse than what you'll see with the Paperwhite and the uniformity is quite good -- the light splays out pretty smoothly across the screen. The color seems a touch different than Paperwhite (it's less white), but I found the hue fine for reading.

As for battery life, Kobo says you can get up to 55 hours of continuous use with the light on and a month of battery life with Wi-Fi and the light turned off. The Kindle and Nook claim numbers twice that with Wi-Fi and the light off. In other words, the Glo isn't beating the competition in terms of performance, but it's more or less in the same ballpark.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Conclusion
The Kobo Glo is a bit of a challenge to rate. From a hardware standpoint it seems very solid, with an impressive built-in light and a high-resolution display that allows for crisper text and is especially useful for reading at smaller font sizes. I particularly liked the interface and some of the extra customization options for font rendering and screen refreshes. But while the Kobo Store certainly has a good selection of books, it doesn't offer the breadth of books offered by Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Also, both Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's stores are simply better, with a more appealing interface and a much greater number of user opinions posted for each book.

At least in the U.S., even as good as the hardware is, the Kobo is a little hard to recommend over the $119 Kindle Paperwhite with Special Offers (yes, it has ads) or the $119 Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. But certainly overseas where Kobo is at its strongest and expanding rapidly -- or for those in the U.S. who want to mix and match EPUB stores -- this is a very good e-reader option that will hopefully continue to improve over time as Kobo tweaks its store and adds new features and performance enhancements.

7.9

Kobo Glo

Score Breakdown

Design 8Features 8Performance 8