The New Kobo Auro H20 – 10 Reasons You’ll Fall in Love With Kobo Too!
After years of years of being a kindle reader, I recently received a Kobo Aura H20 to try out as apart of the 7 Day Kobo e-Reading Challenge and I’ve been surprised at how much I prefer my new Kobo over my Kindle and here’s 10 Reasons You’ll Fall in Love With Kobo Too:
Number 1 – Overall Kobo
The Kobo Aura H20 is slightly larger than what I’m used to (233g grams versus 217 grams) however not that noticeable. I found the screen is also larger in size on the Kobo (6’8 inches). The Kobo has the very cool “E-Ink screens”, which makes reading in the sun…possible and it also has a backlight to help read in the dark. The Kobo Aura H20 is equiped with Wi-Fi to assist in syncing and purchasing books. You can easily change the backlighting of the Kobo by scrolling up and down the book rather than having to go into a separate menu (Kindle, I’m looking at you…)
Number 2 – Battery/Charge time
The battery for the Kobo Aura H20 can supposedly last up to two months (I’m still testing this, so far so good!), it works well for me though …. less charging means more reading!
Number 3 – Special Feature – Waterproof!
The Kobo Aura H20 is waterproof, so no need to purchase a waterproof cover and hope for the best! The H20 can be immersed in 1m of water for up to 30 mins (of course with the charging port closed, make sure to use your cookie when you finish charging it). I don’t really see many people reading underwater but this will be very handy in summer when I’m in the pool!
Number 4 – Customization
From the bottom menu you are able to customize to your reading style, with 11 different front type and 24 front size to choose from. You can also customize the margins so if you prefer shorter sentences you are able to make the margin larger, as well as the line spacing and being able to make the words stand out more by putting them in bold (via the advanced settings). The menu has this handy graph that shows you how many minutes left in a particular chapter, how long the next chapter is and how long you have left in the book. There is also an option for related reading, if you are getting close to the end of your book and want to work out what to read next.
Number 5 – Sleep Cover
When you put your Kobo to sleep it shows the cover of the book you are reading, how far you are into the book and that it is asleep (or powered off). Which isn’t that’s “special” but I think its pretty cool! I have heard of people jailbreaking their kindle to show this, so kudos to you Kobo.
Number 6 – Home Page
The home page, shows so much information! You get the last book you read, a section for recommendations, another for recently added books, plus spots for the latest Pocket news. There’s even a tile telling you when the last sync happened, and you can tap it to sync immediately, easy peasy!
Number 7 – The Library
The Library, is also a great feature, you can either browse by books or by collection* (*which you need to make manually yourself), or by the books you have previewed. Previews are really great as you are able to read the first 1-3 chapters of a book to see if it interests you and then Kobo stores them as a part of your library so you can access them from any device or app.
Number 8 – Supported Formats
Kobo supports 14 file formats (EPUB, EPUB3, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR), you can even read eBooks borrowed from a Public Library. You can also convert your current Kindle e-books into Epubs using an online converter, I found a great article on Cult of Mac about this. The Epub format makes it easy to buy books online from anywhere really (expect amazon), including authors websites and other online book stores, although Kobo is fairly competitive on price and its easier to purchase from the Kobo store rather than another store, where you have to sync your Kobo and transfer files over – too much effort for me!
Number 9 – Super Points
Kobo Super points program is like frequent flyer points for books!!! You can earn 100 points per $10 you spend, as well as earning extra points on bonus days. You can then use your points to purchase or reduce the price of a book! I also recently signed up to the Kobo VIP membership (because I like being a VIP) which is $10 per year (or 4,000 points) and you gain double points = 200 points per $10 as well as 10% off VIP books anytime and you get a free book every year from a choice of popular genres, as well as 10% off Kobo pomotions and bonus days where you earn more points!
Number 10 – The Kobo App
The Kobo app…i have found this app to be extremely helpful, there have been a few minutes where i have been waiting for a meeting with nothing to do and sadly can’t take my Kobo into meetings (it wouldn’t look very professional now..), so i’m able to jump onto my app and continue reading from where i last read (given the Kobo has recently synced which it seems to do auto-magically). To make things even cooler, you don’t HAVE to have a Kobo to read their great selection of books, you can read them all via the app, although having a Kobo is much cooler!
