Review: Kobo Libra Colour

I love e-readers. They’re convenient and one of the few pieces of tech that’s not trying to overload your senses with unnecessary distractions. That’s why I was worried when I heard Kobo was releasing color e-readers. I pictured an iPad-like display littered with apps—yet another screen for my eyes to burn themselves on.

Thankfully, that's not the case. It’s still the E Ink you know and love from your favorite e-readers, just no longer restricted to black and white. Do you need a color screen to read ebooks? No. Is it fun? Yes.

Color Me Impressed

Photograph: Medea Giordano

A color screen means you can see your favorite ebook covers in all their glory, but it also means illustrated children's books and graphic novels really come to life on the display. Curious George and Dune look beautiful on the Libra Colour's 7-inch E Ink panel.

I also tested the new Kobo Clara Colour, which has a 6-inch screen. Dune was fine, but Curious George wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing—the text in this ebook is blue on a yellow background, and the smaller screen made it all more compact in a way that was annoying to my eyes.

Having a color screen means you can write and highlight in color. You can mark up your favorite ebooks directly on the page, not just in separate note files like on a Kindle. However, all of this requires the Kobo Stylus 2, which costs an extra $70. It has a highlight button on the side and an eraser on the end. (You can't write on the Clara Colour, but you can highlight in color.) It's worth noting that the Stylus 2 was out of stock everywhere as of publishing. I've asked Kobo when it’s expected to be available again.

The Libra has a notebook section so you can jot down notes and to-do lists, manage a calendar, or doodle in eight colors plus black and gray. The colors look even more vibrant once you export notebooks to your computer, but exporting also removes the lines from page layouts like calendars and daily planners, which is unfortunate. Color ink was technically available in Kobo's supersize Elipsa 2E, meant for heavy note-taking, but since that screen supports only black and white, these colors only came across once exported to a computer.

Photograph: Medea Giordano

If you save a lot of articles using Pocket, you can read them on Kobos. The Pocket integration was supposed to go away in 2023, but Kobo updated its system to enable them to work, and this is no longer an issue. You can’t write on Pocket articles no matter where you're reading them, but you can import documents you want to mark up to the Libra as PDFs. As a writer, it's fun to break out my old proofreading marks again.

I also tested Kobo's SleepCover ($40), which can be folded into a stand. I usually go coverless when using e-readers because they're pretty durable, but I liked this one too much. It keeps the device steady even when I write notes.

Right to Repair

How colors appear on the Libra screen versus how they appear when exported to a computer.

Photograph: Medea Giordano

Reading on the Libra Colour was a largely problem-free experience, but I had some “ghosting” (where you can see faint traces of menus or erased text) in the notebooks. This usually remedied itself after a few seconds, but it was more noticeable than other e-readers I've tested of late. Occasionally I'd have to turn the page and go back to fix it.

The Libra is waterproof and made from recycled plastics, and the battery should last a month or so, depending on how much you read and write. I am of the mind that the page-turn buttons included here should be standard across all e-readers. That said, the Libra Colour is expensive at $220. Add in the $70 stylus and it's even more of a steep price for a color screen.

If it's any consolation, the Kobo Libra Colour is repairable, so your money can go a long way. Kobo has partnered with iFixit to make kits for repairing the display, battery, and motherboard, plus the front and back covers. This extends to the Clara Colour and the original black-and-white Clara. More details on this are coming soon.

Kobo e-readers may lack the Amazon Kindle's large library, but if you've been trying to move away from all things Amazon, it's a perfectly great e-reader. And with this new Libra, reading and writing in color is just plain fun.