If you like me, gets distracted reading on a tablet or your smartphone by all the other features they come with such as social media, emails, phone calls and not to even mention the weight and battery life, then this one is for you. Kobo’s new addition to their line up of eReader is the new Glo HD, which offers a high resolution, light weight and a comfortable design for prolonged use. The Kobo Glo HD is not expensive and will allow you read on it for up to a month without having to recharge it.
Kobo Glo HD Design:
The first thing you will notice is the weight of the Glo HD, it weighs just 180g and measures 57 x 115 x 9.2 mm, making it very easy to slip in a coat pocket or if it doesn’t fit, you can just pop it in your bag and off you go. The design is very minimalist with just one button at the top to power it on and a micro USB port at the bottom for recharging and data transfer. When it comes to branding, it is also very subtle and not distracting, the logo at the bottom of the device blends in and embossed logo on the back adds to the tactile feeling when holding it. The dotted rubbery back area feels nice in hand and the hands grips onto it, in addition to the size that makes it easy to hold in one hand.
Everything else on the Glo HD happens on its HD touch screen, you can change brightness, settings, navigate pages and more. Its HD display comes in at 6-inch with a Carta E Ink, just as seen on the Kindle Voyage and Paperwhite e-Readers, it packs a 1,448-by-1,072-pixel resolution at 300 pixels per inch, making it very easy to read on. The Glo HD display is designed to be as realistic as possible when it comes to visibility vs real world paper or book, so although you can adjust the brightness levels, by default it’s still very good for reading, even for prolonged periods.
Features:
- 4GB of internal memory (3.1GB free to store up to three thousand ebooks).
- No storage expansion slot.
- Supports other file types, including EPUB format.
- Preinstalled Pocket app to save online articles for offline reading.
- micro USB cable for charging and file transfer.
- Wi-Fi ready with 802.11 b/g/n support.
- Up to 2 months of battery
- 11 built-in fonts and 48 font sizes to chose from
- Adjust line spacing, margins, text justification and page controls to adjust where you tap the screen when moving your story forward.
- Built-in dictionary.
- Select passages and look them up in Google or Wikipedia.
- Progress display, based on chapters or the entire book.
- Find books easily and quickly by sorting books alphabetically, by title or author.
- Displays large book cover images when not in use or asleep.
Kobo Glo HD performance:
The Glo HD comes with all the features needed to encourage more reading, whether you are one to pick up a book and drop it after a couple of chapters, save online articles for offline reading or you just simply want a huge library of books to read, the Glo HD is for you. It’s HD display makes it ever so easy to read books for as long as you want, whether you are in the park with the sun blazing or just in the comfort of your home, you can easily see the display and with the e-ink technology used, the text are sharp.
The Glo HD is very light, making it very easy to just grab it and go. You can read with your back to the bed or lounge bench without worry about dropping it on your face or losing the page you were reading. With more than four million titles, plus magazines and newspapers available at your fingertips, you really have no excuse at all, the Glo HD even makes reading fun by awarding your reading progress and milestones to encourage more reading. It is very easy to operate, with no need to even read the manual to figure out what you need to do or how to adjust the settings. Finally, no complaints at all with the battery performance as I have kept hold of the Glo HD longer than the PR would like to ensure I fully test the battery performance. Although you have no power adaptor in the box, you won’t have to worry about that as it doesn’t need to be charged every night.
Overall, the Glo HD is not expensive, focused at taking your reading very seriously in a fun way without distractions, it’s very easy to operate and offers a long battery life. I can’t really fault it during my time with it, so if you want to find out more about pricing and availability, do check our Kobo Glo HD‘s website for more information. It is available in the UK for £109.99 at Kobo.com, WHSmith, Tesco Online and John Lewis Online.
