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Kobo Clara HD Review

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4.5

Kobo's $129.99 Clara HD e-reader throws your public library experience into overdrive. With a new software update, it now has the best interface available for borrowing and reading books from US-based libraries that use Overdrive software. That's enough to earn our Editors' Choice recommendation, which it shares with the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite.

Even if you don't borrow from libraries, this is a lovely device. The Clara HD is the e-reader boiled down to the essentials: a sharp screen in an easy-to-hold body with long battery life and a comforting, color-changing front light. As long as you don't have an existing library of Amazon books, this is a better buy than the Paperwhite.

Kobo is a big deal in several countries outside the US, most notably Canada. It runs its own ebook store, which recently had everything we looked for that isn't published by Amazon. It works with Overdrive books from public libraries, and supports a wide range of other formats natively: EPUB, PDF, RTF, text files, JPEGs, CBR, and CBZ, for books and documents you find around the web. If those are the files you read, the Clara HD is the reader for you.

Small and Sleek

The Kobo Clara HD, at 6.3 by 4.3 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and 5.9 ounces, is significantly smaller and lighter than the Kindle Paperwhite (6.7 by 4.6 by 0.4 inches, 7.2 ounces). It has the same 6-inch, 300ppi E-Ink Carta screen as the Paperwhite and the Barnes & Noble Nook GlowLight 3. It's worth mentioning that its 300ppi resolution is slightly sharper than Kobo's last-gen e-readers, which were 265ppi.

Kobo Clara HD 7

The back is slightly tapered, with a stipple pattern that makes it easy to grip. I put the Clara HD in a $39 leather SleepCover, which feels terrific, protects the reader, and acts as a stand. The power button is the only physical button on the Clara HD. Unlike the GlowLight 3, there are no physical page-turn buttons; you tap the side of the screen to turn pages, which is fine. The Nook's page-turn buttons are pretty stiff anyway; for really pleasing physical buttons, you have to go all the way up to the $249 Amazon Kindle Oasis.

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The Clara HD's color-changing front light is a great strength. You can shift it from energizing blue to restful yellow, and anywhere in between; it can also shift automatically based on the time of day. The Barnes & Noble Nook Glowlight 3 does the same thing, but Amazon's still committed to serving you blue light only.

Battery life is great. After reading Sylvain Neuvel's new "Only Human" and volume 6 of the manga "Yotsuba," I still had more than half the battery to go.

Unfortunately, the Clara HD isn't waterproof. None of the e-readers available at this price point are, but given that Kobo pioneered water-resistant e-readers with its H2O models, it would have been nice to see. You'll have to jump up to the $179.99 Kobo Aura H2O for that.

The Clara HD also doesn't support audiobooks, but neither do its competitors in this price range. For audiobooks on an e-reader, once again, we suggest the Kindle Oasis.

Kobo Clara HD 4

Reading Experience

Kobo's user interface feels like the Ubuntu of ebook readers. It's very basic.

The Clara HD connects to the internet using 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. You can download books using the Kobo Store option on the main menu; it also tries to recommend books to you, and did pretty decently discovering my taste. You can also drag books over into its 8GB of storage using a micro USB cable, and I had no problem doing so from a PC or a Mac. Along with books, you can sign into a Pocket account and read any article stored in Pocket on the e-reader. That can be a lot of fun.

You can arrange your books into collections of related titles. The default view is a simple list. Tap into a book, and you're reading, in 10 different fonts with a wide variety of sizes and weights. Tap on words, and you can highlight or annotate them, get dictionary definitions, or share quotes to Facebook. You can add bookmarks, pop over to the table of contents at any time, and in Kobo-purchased books, you can get stats on how far you are through the book.

So, Kobo has the basics, and handles them well. It doesn't go nearly as deep as Amazon does in adding supplementary material to booksthere's no X-Ray keeping track of characters and plots, and you don't have Amazon's deep Goodreads integration. But a lot of Kindle readers don't use those features, anyway.

The Clara HD handled Kobo-purchased, PDF, and EPUB books well, including tables of contents. Weirdly, Kobo-purchased books don't have overall page numbers, just numbers within chapters. EPUBs downloaded from elsewhere show page numbers.

Kobo Clara HD 15

We tried several manga and comics on the Clara HD, in PDF and CBR formats. Page flips on heavy PDFs are a little slowCBRs are much fasterbut in general, we'd advise the Aura H2O for your manga reading, because the 6-inch screen here is just a little too small. The problem is text size, not clarity.

Borrowing, Not Buying

It used to be awkward to borrow library books with Kobo, but a September software update changed everything.

If your library uses Overdrive, you can enter your library card number in the device's Settings and then see your local library integrated into the Kobo store. You can browse the library's virtual shelves or search, right on the device. If a book is available, you'll see a Borrow with Overdrive option, and it will be wirelessly downloaded. You can also use your library or Overdrive's site to browse and download books, and they'll sync automatically. If a book isn't immediately available, you can place it on hold. On the home screen, you see exactly how many days you have left before you have to return it.

There's one minor failing: If you're a member of multiple library systems (like I am), you can only sign into one at a time on the device. Still, though, this is great. It's better than the Amazon interface, which requires you to use your library's site to send the book to your e-reader. I downloaded Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash," and the formatting and internal linking was perfect.

Comparisons and Conclusions

Some people are library readers. I think more people should be library readers. If you're a library reader, your Kobo becomes a magic extension of your library system.

The Kobo Clara HD is an easy, light, and simple way to read ebooks. It slips into a pocket, its 300ppi screen is sharp, its battery life is terrific, and its color-changing front light won't keep you up at night. Unlike Barnes & Noble, which is in dire corporate financial straits, Kobo is owned by very stable giant Rakuten, which also owns the company that rents out all of your library's ebooks. And Kobo has the best Overdrive library reading experience of any e-reader.

That said, Amazon and Apple own 92 percent of the ebook market in the US, and Amazon has also become one of America's largest publishers. You can't read Amazon or Apple ebooks on this e-reader. That means we can't kick Amazon's Paperwhite out of the Editors' Choice category entirely. But now it has to share with Kobo.

Where to Buy

Our Best Ebook Reader Picks

Ebook Reader Product Comparisons

Further Reading

Kobo Clara HD Specs

Dimensions 6.6 by 4.3 by 0.3 inches
Weight 5.9 oz
Screen Size 6 inches
Storage Capacity 8 GB
Book Formats HTML, PDF, TXT, CBR, CBZ, EPUB, RTF

About Sascha Segan

Sascha Segan
PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society. Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than his home town of New York, his favorite cities are Barcelona and Hong Kong. While he's a fourth-generation Manhattanite, he now lives in Queens with his wife and daughter. 

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