Wired's latest review confirms what budget-conscious readers have suspected - Kobo's color e-readers deliver premium features at prices that undercut Amazon's offerings by significant margins. The Clara Colour matches Kindle Paperwhite pricing while adding full color capability, and the Libra Colour beats Kindle Colorsoft on both cost and functionality.
Kobo just delivered a pricing reality check to the e-reader market. While Amazon positions its new Kindle Colorsoft as a premium upgrade starting at $280, Kobo's competing devices undercut those prices while matching or exceeding functionality. The Clara Colour costs just $160 - exactly what you'd pay for a standard Kindle Paperwhite, but with full color capability that Amazon charges a premium for. That's nearly a $100 savings over Amazon's cheapest color option, according to Wired's comprehensive review published today. The price gap gets even more interesting with Kobo's flagship Libra Colour, starting at $230 compared to the Colorsoft's $280. But it's not just about cheaper pricing - the Libra includes page-turning buttons that Amazon mysteriously omitted from its color lineup, plus optional stylus support for digital note-taking. Both Kobo devices use the same E Ink Kaleido 3 technology powering Amazon's screen, delivering 4,096 colors with 150 PPI color resolution and 300 PPI for black-and-white text. Wired's reviewer Nena Farrell found Kobo's colors appeared 'a little brighter and more saturated than the Kindle Colorsoft,' suggesting the Canadian company may have fine-tuned its display calibration better than its Seattle rival. The real differentiator emerges in software capabilities. Kobo's dark mode works with EPUB documents downloaded to the device, while Amazon's proprietary AZW3 format can't switch to dark mode at all. For readers who prefer independent publications or library downloads in standard EPUB format, this represents a significant usability advantage. The timing couldn't be better for Kobo parent company Rakuten, which has struggled to gain market share against Amazon's ecosystem dominance. Color e-readers represent the industry's biggest innovation since frontlit screens, with the potential to attract graphic novel readers and note-takers who've avoided e-ink devices. Amazon's premium pricing strategy may have created an opening that Kobo is aggressively exploiting. The Clara Colour's 6-inch screen trades some real estate for portability, while the 7-inch Libra Colour matches the Colorsoft's dimensions. Both include ComfortLight PRO to reduce blue light exposure, waterproof designs, and weeks of battery life. For $300, the Libra Colour with stylus still undercuts Amazon's $400 Kindle Scribe while adding color capability the Scribe lacks. Industry analysts have noted that e-reader innovation has accelerated after years of incremental updates. Color displays represent the first major leap since Amazon introduced the Kindle Oasis design, potentially reshaping reader expectations and purchasing decisions.
