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Kobo Aura: No Kindle killer, but a classy e-reader

2013-10-16
I'm David Carr no I and I'm here with the Kobo aura an e aqui reader that competes with the kindle paperwhite the first thing you think when you look at it is that it's screen is smaller than the paper whites but it's really an optical illusion the screens are both 6 inches and the auras just smaller than the paperwhite and weighs a little over an ounce less Kobo which is a stronger presence in international markets than in the u.s. describes the aura as having an edge to edge screen and what that really means is that it simply looks like the screen you'd see on a tablet with no elevation for the border surrounding the display the layer that covers the display has a matte finish that helps cut down on the glare especially compared to the reflections you can get from the glass covering the display on your typical tablet I really like the design overall there's a grippy finish on the back and Amazon would do well to emulate the auras smaller form factor like the paperwhite the aura also has a built-in light and it's good though not as good as the one in the second generation paperweight I also didn't think the device as a whole is quite a zippy as the paperwhite even if they both run on a 1 gigahertz processor aside from the smaller design where the aura has an advantage is in the memory Department you get 4 gigabytes of on-board storage compared to the Kindles 2 gigabytes and there's a microSD card slot for adding additional memory Kobo has also managed to virtually eliminate the flashing you typically get with Yankee readers it used to be that the display had to refresh every five or six page turns but with the aura or you rarely see the screen flash I'm not going to get into all the Auris features in this video read the text review for that but i will say that overall the reading experience is quite good and kobo's come a long way in a few years improving its user interface and bookstore and adding some interesting extra features where the aura doesn't quite measure up to the paperwhite is the screen itself paperwhite has better contrast and the text looks crisper on the screen the auras light also has a slight greenish tinge to it the paperwhite slight by comparison is white and more natural-looking in the end despite the auras design it's hard to choose it over the paperwhite particularly when you factor in its higher price point of 149 99 that said it's still a very good e-reader it's just not as good as the competition i'm david carr no I thanks for watching
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