I have had the Kobo for just over a week now and have read 4 books on it so far. There are some things that I have appreciated and some that I have found lacking. I am going to present them in point form just because I find it easier to lay the review out that way.
Pros:
Good battery life – Up till this point I have not had any complaints with the battery life. It did seem to drain a little bit quicker than it should but that just may have been me playing with the new toy and less to do with the battery capacity itself. Other than loading books I have only charged the device twice and it has been going steady.
Price – I have purchased mostly older books and have found the prices to be good, for the newer books that I have purchased the price was under the cost of the hard cover for one and about the same for a paper back for the other. One of the books I was purchasing for the second time and it was a Canadian author so I did not mind paying again.
Portability – It is great to just grab it and run out the door. I have taken it out with me when I have gone for a meal or when I was going to do laundry at the laundry mat. The device fits into my back pocket quite nicely so I have a nice easy place to carry it.
Ease of use – The device is laid out fairly well and while I still find myself going to the wrong menu at some times I have gotten used to the two menu system. Turning pages is easy and is very intuitive.
Cons
This really does feel like a last stages beta device for the following reasons.
Whenever I have connected the Kobo to the computer and synchronized with the desktop client the books that I ahve finished reading come back showing that they are unread. I have also had a book come back showing that I am still half way through it when I had finished it long before.
What I would like to see is a way to mark books as read in either the desktop client or the website interface. The only way that I can see to remove the books from the I’m reading list is to delete them. This would seem to be a suitable substitute but after 30 days they are automatically purged. For the books that I have purchased this is not too bad since I can access them from the purchased list.
My final thoughts are it is going to be a nice device when it is finished. Just a little bit of work for book management and this will be a good device. Far from what it probably was during early beta and just needs to crest the final hill to make it complete.
