Quick reminder that no post on Ms Unexpected is sponsored, ever.
Like many people I know, I tend to keep my electronics for as long as possible, because (1) I always find that everything is too darn expensive — a trait I’ve inherited from my dad, I’m afraid —, and (2) I feel guilty whenever I have to replace them because there is no real way to know what sort of damages discarded electronics cause on the environment. So I still had my first Kindle, a 4th generation device from 2011, which I still loved, but lacked some features I really needed.
Because I spend a lot of time using screens, both for my work and hobbies (like this blog, for instance, or my mild addiction to BioShock) and because my work requires me to read a frankly insane number of texts on a weekly basis (scientific papers, press articles and books alike), I needed a way to keep not printing all those texts while not furthering the steady destruction of my eyes. The problem with the Kindle was that the screen was a little small to read pdfs and that there were many new formats that it didn’t read, such as mobi and epub. It was time for an upgrade.
Kobo Elipsa vs. reMarkable 2
While I was comparing different e-readers, it occurred to me that it would be very nice to have one on which I could annotate documents just like I do on my computer, especially since I am a compulsive note-taker, Post-it-user, and general book-defacer. It took me forever to choose which e-reader I wanted, and in the end, it came down to just two potential candidates: the reMarkable 2 (since the first one had been discontinued) and the Kobo Elipsa.
Both the reMarkable 2 and the Kobo Elipsa had the E-Ink Carta technology, which is the fourth generation of paper-like screens with high energy efficiency (or low energy needs, depending on how you look at it). Both screens were the same size (10.3″). The Kobo Elipsa boasted a comfortable 32 GB storage and the reMarkable 2 an 8 GB. At 383 gr, the Elipsa was slightly lighter than its reMarkable counterpart (405 gr) though both e-readers ranked on the heavier side compared to other, more portable models. Both the Elipsa and the reMarkable 2 also offered some sort of note-taking function with a handwriting-to-typing conversion system. Subjectively speaking, I found the reMarkable prettier than the Elipsa.
The Kobo Elipsa came with a sleep cover (that is, a sleeve that puts the Elipsa into sleep mode when you flip it over) and a stylus included for €399 (±$426/£340). The reMarkable was priced at €299 (±$319/£255), with the stylus sold separately at €79 (±$84/£67) for the Marker or €129 (±$138/£110) for the Marker Plus, and the Folio cover at either €79 or €169 (±$180/£144) depending on whether you wanted a basic sleeve or a premium leather cover. All in all, the price of the reMarkable varied between €457 (±$488/£389) if you picked all the cheapest options and €597 (±$638/£509) for the most expensive version, on top of which you had to add a €5.99 monthly subscription to reMarkable Connect, a service that gives you unlimited cloud storage and enables the handwriting conversion.
All that sounded crazy to me. Why would I want to pay for a monthly subscription? I don’t know about you folks, but I really hate the fact that everything is subscription-based nowadays. Can’t I exchange money for a product and just… own it, as a material thing that belongs to me? More than the rather steep price of the reMarkable (after all, I only buy an e-reader every ten years or so), it was that practice that finished persuading me to buy a Kobo Elipsa instead. Plus, it was my understanding that the reMarkable was more of a note-taking device and less of an e-reader, while the Elipsa was more reading-oriented.
And I regret nothing.
Specs
The specifications of the Kobo Elipsa are as follows:
- Manufacturer: Rakuten
- Display: 10.3” E Ink Carta 1200 touchscreen, 227 PPI, 1404 x 1872 resolution with Dark Mode
- Storage: 32GB
- Processor: Quad Core @ 1.8 GHz
- Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 ac/b/g/n and USB-C
- Battery life: weeks
- Front Light: ComfortLight – A one-colour light with adjustable brightness. The warmth isn’t adjustable.
- Dimensions: 193 x 227.5 x 7.6 mm
- Weight: 383g
- Supported formats: EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR, Kobo Audiobooks
- Languages: English, French, French (Canada), German, Spanish, Spanish (Mexico), Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Turkish, Japanese, Traditional Chinese
Favourite features
After a month of daily use of the Kobo Elipsa, my favourite features on top of what you can reasonably expect from any e-reader are the Pocket integration, the insane battery life, and the notebooks.
Pocket integration
Pocket is an application that makes it possible to save articles and stories from websites that you would like to read on your Kobo eReader. Once it is installed on your phone and after you have created your Pocket account, all you have to do is save the articles that sound appealing to you to the app, and it automatically uploads them to your Kobo Elipsa.
The app exists in IOS and Android versions, and there are Safari, Chrome and Firefox plugins for a complete cross-platform experience. If like me, you tend to gather articles from everywhere and read them on your phone later, then that feature of the Elipsa will be perfect for you because it will not only spare your eyes the strain but will also let you keep a permanent collection of the best pieces you’ve read from everywhere. It has been a bit of a change of habit for me to switch from my phone to my e-reader to read The New Yorker or National Geographic, but it is infinitely more comfortable than what I used to do. Pocket has been a real game-changer for me.
Battery life
There’s no other test than the test of life when it comes to battery performance, so to cut a long story short: in a month of daily use, I’ve charged the battery exactly twice — once when I first received my e-reader, and once before going away for the weekend when I was being paranoid that 85% wouldn’t be enough for two days (the battery level didn’t decrease at all during that weekend despite my use of the Elipsa). I have noticed that the battery decreased a little quicker when I used the notebook to doodle, which seems fair enough to me.
The notebooks
There are two types of notebooks on the Kobo Elipsa: basic and advanced. A basic notebook will let you handwrite, doodle, map and perform all sorts of actions that you would perform with a regular, real-life, paper notebook or sketchbook, with a choice of plain, ruled, dotted or squared “paper”. An advanced notebook, on the other hand, only comes with ruled paper because you have to write between the lines for the reader to convert your handwriting into typed text. It was the feature I was the most doubtful about because I thought it was a bit gimmicky, and my handwriting is generally way too difficult for even human beings to decipher. I was very wrong. I don’t know what software they use, but it is very efficient. It didn’t take the processor more than two seconds to convert my scribbles with a 99% accuracy. I was in awe.
Weakness
The one thing that I’m not loving about the Kobo Elipsa is the ghosting. While it is expected to see some faint background on any e-reader, I really feel that the next point of focus of E-Ink screen designers should be the reduction of those shadows. It is not particularly bad when reading on the Elipsa (where you can adjust the page refresh frequency), but the ghosting tends to be a bit darker and to last a little longer when using the notebooks.
Remark
As I have mentioned earlier, the Kobo Elipsa is not a small e-reader. It is over 20 cm long and weighs a little under 400 gr, so it might not be the best solution for you if you have the habit of reading in awkward positions in bed or to read standing for a long time, like on the underground, for example. That being said, I find it is the right format for me as I enjoy a bigger screen and it makes the use of the notebooks very comfortable.
Conclusion
I am happy with my choice to buy a Kobo Elipsa e-reader. It fulfils the functions I was looking for in an e-reader (reads lots of formats, good screen, good battery life) as well as those of a note-taking device (easy to annotate all those formats, notebooks) and even came with the app I did not know I needed (Pocket). All in all, it is a very good tool to use on a daily basis and a good partner for my moments of leisure too. I’ve even started to read more for fun again after being a little burnt out with all the dissertation-related reading I had to do, so that’s nice.
