Kobo Libra Color Review 2024

Photo: Jordan McMahon

Getting the Kobo Elipsa 2E last year changed my relationship with e-readers. For the first time, I could write in the margins of my e-books. And its direct integration with the read-it-later service Pocket makes it the best way for me to read long news articles, as the e-ink display is easier on the eyes than my iPhone or iPad’s LCD display. Unfortunately, its 10.3-inch screen makes it too big for daily use, and so I still relied on my Kindle Paperwhite for everyday reading and carried the Elipsa with me only when I wanted to take in-depth handwritten notes. But this year, Kobo came out with the Libra Color, which is about the size of a Paperwhite. It has everything I loved about the Elipsa — plus, it’s in color, and it’s user-repairable. It’s the e-reader I use daily now.

Color e-ink isn’t new, but the color e-readers I’ve previously tried were usually washed-out-looking and never looked quite as sharp as black-and-white e-ink. The screens were also more prone to ghosting (showing artifacts from previous pages). Additionally, many manufacturers give their color e-readers more tabletlike capabilities, such as running apps, which results in laggy performance and a more distracting interface. That’s why I haven’t recommended a color e-reader until now.

The Libra Color makes full-color images look gorgeous, and with this device, Kobo focused on enhancing the reading experience rather than expanding functionality. While the colors are more muted than what you’d find on a printed page or book cover, they’re still vivid. The best test for it is comic books: I read X-Men’s Operation: Zero Tolerance after watching X-Men ’97, and it had enough color to keep me from wanting to order a physical copy. I also read strips from The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book, and each panel looked just as it did in the Sunday paper. Text can look a bit small in some comics given the Libra’s screen size, but it’s still legible, and you can pinch to zoom if you need a closer look. The display also shows book covers, both in your library and when the device is sleeping, in color.

My favorite part of having a color e-reader is that I can now change the color of my highlights as an easy way to categorize them, obviating the need to write an explanation for the highlight in the margins for my future self. Yellow is for useful information, blue is for inspiring writing, and green is for plot elements I’m prone to forgetting. As with the Elipsa, the Libra supports Kobo’s stylus (sold separately), which makes highlighting more accurate and snappy than the Paperwhite’s finger-dragging method. When I want to jot a note to myself, I can do so right over the text. To add any notes to a highlight on a Kindle Paperwhite, you have to type them in a sticky-note-style widget that isn’t always in view. I prefer Kobo’s approach, which keeps your handwritten notes right alongside the book’s text, just like you would with real paper.

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