[Review] One Of The Best E-Readers Available Today

There are plenty of people who love reading books and do not mind paying an extra buck for it. However, they cannot carry all their books with them everywhere and books do require lot of space to store. That is why owning an E-reader or tablet makes more sense for book enthusiasts. Kobo has recently launched their set of E-readers and tablet in India and we tested Kobo Arc, their 7-inch reading tablet. This is what we could make of it.

Design
The shape and body of Kobo Arc is great for reading. The 7-inch HD screen’s brightness is perfect for reading, irrespective of the lighting conditions. The back has matt finishing, which lets the user grip the device with ease. We did find it slightly heavy at 364 grams, would have been better if the weight could have been lowered. On the brighter side, this reading tablet has a great battery life. We got about 10 hours of reading time after a full charge. Kobo says the tablet can stay alive for 2 week in standby mode.

Kobo has added twin speakers at the bottom of the screen, in case one wants to listen to an audio book or play a movie. Though primarily it is built to read books, users can do various other things on it as well such as video chat; for which the company has added a 1.3 MP HD camera in the front. Volume control is on the side with the power button on top.

Performance and interface
Kobo Arc is not the fastest tablet on the block, but is quite fast when comes to reading books. Kobo has added a 1.5 GHz dual core CPU inside along with 1 GB RAM. To store new books and novels a 16 GB memory is also given. As the device is Android driven most of the Android features are open to the users. People can visit the Google Play store and download apps, games and books from there. But one would want to use the Kobo store to download books as they have over 4 million titles at great prices.

One can connect to the internet using Wi-Fi with ease and download books as easily too. Kobo has put their own UI over the Android 4.0 platform and puts all the necessary items at one place on the screen. A superior tile-like system has been used on the home screen, which makes navigation easier. Users can customise it according their needs. We tested a few less graphically demanding games on the device and it did not come under any sort of pressure. The sound is not bad either.

Verdict
Kobo Arc is one of the finest E-reader cum tablet we have reviewed in recent times. It gives you lot of space to personalise and manage services with ease. Kobo is giving an extensive range of titles with most popular authors featuring books here. The price is reasonable too; one can pick the tablet up for Rs 9,999 from leading electronic stores in the country.