Kobo Aura One New E-Book Reader vs. Amazon Kindle; Kobo Aura One Release Date, Specs, and Other News

Aug 18, 2016 11:50 AM EDT

If you have never heard of Kobo, they have made some great e-book readers since the Amazon Kindle ebook revolution. They have recently announced their latest product with the Kobo Aura One, and this is what is known about the Kobo Aura One new e-book reader release date, specs, and other news.

According to Wired, the Kobo Aura One is large at a 7.8-inch screen. It is not only large, but it is also thin (6.9 mm), light (230 grams), and water resistant. The stats on water resistance is IPX8 standards, which means that it can be submerged in 2 meters of water. The last reader that Kobo made so water resistant is the Aura H20, which was an IP67 rating.

It is large enough to be Kobo's biggest e-book reader, and the biggest high-resolution e-ink screen that customers can buy. What is interesting is that e-books have dropped about a 11.3 percent, and Kobo has introduced a new feature which is the ability to change the color temperature of the screen. The user can adjust the settings manually like the overall brightness of the screen, and can be set to auto-adjust throughout the day.

One of the features is a tiled home screen that shows the books that the user is in the middle of reading as well as quick access to the store and purchased books. It is also able to sync to your Pocket account in order to read articles on the device.

According to The Verge, Kobo's parent company, Rakuten, acquired a company last year known as Overdrive that has some deep ties with e-book lending programs around the country, so there is a lot of possibility for lending in Kobo's Aura One software. All that you need to do is have the library credentials plugged in, and titles that are available for borrowing will also show up when you search. By the way, Kobo has 5 million titles in its store, but not as much as you can find on Amazon.

The Aura One has a reading experience to either tap the sides or swipe across to turn the pages, and you tap the top of the screen to bring up the Aura One's menu. It is possible to press and hold on words to look up definitions, as well as selecting text and make notes. By the way, there are no physical buttons save for the power and sleep button on the back of the device.

The Kobo Aura One will launch on $230 on September 6 in the United States, UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Turkey.