Summary
TheKobo Clara Colouris Rakuten’s departure from its grayscale eReaders, and the 6-inch color E Ink display is certainly its highlight. But I was most drawn to its compact, comfortable-to-hold body and long-lasting battery life. Its simplicity makes it perfect for anyone looking for an intro-level eReader with a colorful screen and a simple UI.
Rakuten Kobo Clara Colour eReader
The Kobo Clara Colour features a 6-inch E ink Kaleido 3 screen, 16 GB of storage, adjustable color temperature, and weeks of battery life, all in a small package you can take anywhere.
Price and Availability
The Kobo Clara Colour is available to order now on Rakuten’s website. The eReader retails for $149.99.
Design: Comfortable to Hold and Take Anywhere
Having previously reviewedRakuten’s Kobo Elipsa 2E, the Kobo Clara Colour’s interface felt familiar, but its body size differed. The Elipsa 2E’s 10.3-inch screen would feel massive next to this compact device. Picking up the thin 6-inch device felt like a mass-market paperback rather than a trade paperback (Google the difference for a visual). I was pleased to feel how easy it was to hold, as my main complaint with larger eReaders is how uncomfortable they can be when held for long periods.
At a mere 6 ounces, the Kobo Clara Colour felt featherlight, and I could take itanywhere. Its IPX8 waterproof rating means anywhere, including reading poolside or while in the bathtub.
With a streamlined body, the Kobo Clara Colour is the height of simplicity. I found the power button on the back and the single USB-C port on the bottom of the device, which was all I needed to know to get started.
My unit came with a sleep cover, but the eReader doesn’t come with one by default. It’s an add-on purchase ($30). TheSleepCoveralso doubles as a foldable stand. But if you want to save money, they offer $20 options, like theBasic SleepCover(not foldable) and aclear case. I also signed up for a month of Kobo Plus ($10 per month) to read included ebooks and listen to audiobooks to get the bulk of my reading materials.
The Color Display
TheKobo Clara Colour’s colorful displayis one of the main reasons someone with another Kobo eReader might get this device as a spare or an upgrade. But while I loved the way the colorful E Ink came across on the display, I don’t think I would solely grab this device for the color if I already had another Kobo eReader. It was a nice feature that made highlighting text more organized since I could color-code sections. So it’s a major plus for heavy highlighters and annotators. Colorful book covers also looked great, including the Kobo edition of Anton Chekov’s play “The Seagull” and the dreamy seashore scene of Jane Austen’s “Sanditon,” but that’s where the color usually stopped.
The color doesn’t feel like a significant upgrade unless you spend a lot of time highlighting or reading full-color comics, travel guides, or children’s picture books. I downloaded some graphic novels from Kobo Plus, like the first volumes of “Fairy Tale” and “Attack on Titan,” to see how well the colorful illustrated covers looked on them. In most cases, book covers looked crisp and beautiful (though not high-definition), and even in grayscale, comics looked beautiful. I most enjoyed the color E Ink in books like a fully illustrated 1996 human anatomy book, a travel guide to Copenhagen, and articles saved with my linked Pocket account since they gave me more time to appreciate the color.
If you don’t already own a Kobo eReader and find a color display enticing, this may be its main selling point. As a reader, I found the color a fantastic (albeit secondary) feature that made reading specific types of books and articles more enjoyable.
Reading with the Kobo Clara Colour
On other Kobo devices, I experienced significant lag when tapping to turn the page and some occasional text ghosting. The Kobo Clara Colour was speedy when I tapped to go to the next page, and only on rare occasions did I notice any text or image ghosting. The simple, streamlined reading experience compared to other eReaders was welcome. The Kobo interface was less cluttered on the Clara Colour (fewer bottom tabs and useless Beta features), which made navigation more accessible and more beginner-friendly. (Or for people like me who want to tap and read rather than get lost in a mire of excessive extra features.)
But it wasn’t just its simplicity that I liked. The top reason I’d buy the Kobo Clara Colour was its slim, comfortable build. It was a pleasure to hold. I could read on the device for hours and avoid the dreaded hand and wrist fatigue that plagued me on larger eReaders. Nor did I have to prop the Clara Colour on a pillow to read because of its clunky weight. I could grab the Clara Colour, stick it in my purse, run errands, and whip it out to start reading comfortablyanywhere. And I did! That said, if your heart is on a larger display, the Clara Colour isnotfor you. A smaller screen has limitations, after all.
From reading Jane Austen’s unfinished novel “Sanditon” in an Urgent Care (don’t ask) to exploring Great Depression era “Cannery Row” by John Steinbeck in various locations, reading on the Kobo Clara Colour was relaxing, engaging, and downright fun. Helpful features like adjusting the brightness with a quick up or down swipe along the left margin of the screen made it practical, and the ability to customize the color temperature of the display was also helpful for nighttime reading when I wanted warm, amber backlighting.
The Rakuten Kobo Bookstore
Of all the features I enjoyed least, it was, sadly, perusing the Rakuten Kobo bookstore on the device. Why? Because it’s basic (yet cluttered), and searching through recommended lists and other categories felt like falling into an online shopping black hole. Specifically, browsing Kobo Plus options was a black hole of what looked to be self-published romances. (If that’s your thing, awesome. For me, it was a pain in the butt to sift through.) I found most luck sifting through a list of classics or changing the filter options to “Most Popular,” where I did find some gems like books by Joyce Carol Oates and older bestsellers.
Still, I preferred to browse the Kobo bookstore on my laptop, where I could more easily search for what I wanted and feel less overwhelmed. After I added more books to my Kobo account online and hit the sync button on my device, I started to see more relevant suggestions on the Kobo Plus page on the eReader, which may be a great hack to get you started.
Battery Life: Plenty of Time to Read
When I first received the Kobo Clara Colour, I charged it fully, which took about two hours. After that, I didn’t need to charge the eReader again. It lasted a full two weeks and hit about 20% on the 14th day. This was with light to moderate reading throughout the period, with some days reading less than 30 minutes and others reading an hour or two at a time. I typically kept the brightness at around 70 to 80% in the daytime and hovered around 40% or less at bedtime. This aligns with Rakuten’s estimate that you could get up to 42 days of reading on a single charge (at 30% brightness consistently), though I don’t know how many people would keep the screen brightness so low. So, a better estimate for the average reader would be around two to three weeks of battery life (less if you’re an extremely heavy reader).
Should You Buy the Kobo Clara Colour?
If you’re in the market for an eReader, theKobo Clara Colouris a fantastic choice for a color E Ink screen for portability, comfort, and simplicity. It’s also an affordable option for an eReader with color and has just enough features (like highlighting and annotations) to please people who like to mark up their books.
If you wantmorefeatures, like the ability to write directly onto ebooks and don’t mind skipping color, you might opt for the pricierKobo Elipsa 2Eoranother bestselling option.
