Kobo has taken the wraps off its latest ebook reader with high res display which has the Amazon Kindle Voyage nemesis written all over it. The Kobo Glo HD as it is known would be available in Australia, Canada, US and New Zealand by May 1; France by May 22; Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and UK by June 1 for $129.99.
The Kobo Glo HD sports a 6-inch Carta E-Ink touchscreen display with a display resolution of 1448 x 1072 pixels resulting in a pixel density of 300ppi. It also comes with ComfortLight proprietary feature which adapts the reader to low-light situations. It is powered by a 1GHz processor paired with 4GB space of internal storage. The slate is said to have a hidden microSD card slot; that’s probably a treasure hunt for the buyer.
The Kobo Glo HD and Amazon Kindle Voyage use the same display setup and resolution, weighs 180 grams and sports 4GB space of internal storage. In terms of dimensions they the latter edges the former as the Glo HD (157mm x 115mm x 9.2mm) is thicker and shorter than the Kindle Voyage (162mm x 115mm x 7.6mm).
It supports micro USB 2.0 and has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity for browsing and downloading relevant files. The battery is said to provide two months of reading for half an hour per day provided that the light and Wi-Fi are turned off. It offers bookmark features, reading statistics, note taking and highlighting.
The Kobo Glo HD is priced $129.99 which is closer to the price of the Amazon Kindle Paper ($119.99) and $70 lesser than the Amazon Kindle Voyage ($179.99). The difference in price could be seen in areas like ambient lighting detection on cellular connectivity, page-turning pressure points on the bezel.
