The Kindle Colorsoft offers an impressive color screen, but it’s not for everybody. Luckily, if you don’t want to lock yourself into Amazon’s ecosystem, the Kobo Libra Colour is an excellent alternative that’s on sale for an all-time low of $199.99 ($20 off) at Amazon and Target for Black Friday. You can also buy it for the same price from Rakuten Kobo, and if you purchase it with a $50 gift card, the retailer is throwing in a $10 credit that’s good toward books, styli, and audiobooks.
Personally, I am a big fan of the Kobo Libra Colour. The waterproof e-reader features the same color E Ink technology used in the Kindle Colorsoft, along with the same crisp 300ppi resolution, which is halved in color mode. There are some subtle differences, though. For example, the Colorsoft’s screen appears more vibrant and neutral than that of the Kobo, and ultimately, my colleague Andrew Liszewski preferred it. Still, that doesn’t make the Colour’s inferior. Its 7-inch screen is warm and bright, and Kobo offers an adjustable natural light slider if you want to change up the hue.
However, perhaps the biggest selling points of the Libra Colour are the additional features it offers, which come at a cheaper price. It costs $80 less than the Colorsoft at $199.99, but unlike the Colorsoft, the Libra Colour offers stylus support (though you’ll have to purchase the stylus separately). That’s handy, particularly if you want to highlight passages in whatever you’re reading. What’s more, the Libra Colour features physical page-turning buttons, which I feel makes an e-reader more intuitive to use.
The Libra Colour offers a few software perks, too, including native support for read-it-later app Pocket so you can read articles offline. You can even borrow free library ebooks directly on your Kobo, thanks to its built-in support for Overdrive. Obviously, the main drawback is that the Kobo doesn’t natively support Kindle books. That being said, you can still convert your Kindle library and read them on your Libra Colour, even if it does take some extra steps.
