The Kobo Glo e-ink reader is made by Kobo, a Canadian company, in order to compete with the industry heavyweights such as the Nook Simple Touch GlowLight, as well as the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. Overall, the Kobo Glo is a lightweight e-reader which distinguishes itself from the competition with its ComfortLight technology for reading in the dark.

Cost and Specifications

The Kobo Glo e-ink reader is pretty similar to other e-ink readers such as the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and the Nook Simple Touch in terms of design as well as specifications. The device is 114 x 157 x 10 millimeters (4.5 x 6.2 x 0.4 inches) and weighs 6.5 ounces (185 grams), which is slightly lighter than the 6.95 ounces of the Nook Simple Touch GlowLight. Furthermore, it has a 1 GHz processor, a 6 inch XGA Pearl E Ink touchscreen display at 1024×768 resolution, and 16 level gray scale. These are all standard specifications for an e-ink reader, and in line with the technical specifications of other comparable e-ink readers.
The battery function is supposed to last over 1 month without Wi-Fi, or up to 70 hours with continuous usage with ComfortLight. The Kobo Glo comes with 2 gigabytes of internal storage and is expandable with up to 32 gigabytes of storage in the form of a Micro SD card. Users can download books directly from Kobo’s online store, which they add to their library once the books have been purchased. Kobo Glo also offers a feature called Reading Life, which shows a user’s reading statistics, including pages that the user has read, percentage of library that the user has read, and offers virtual trophies for these achievements.

Supported Functions

In terms of connectivity, the Kobo Glo supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and the display features a responsive touchscreen. The screen is glare-free and fingerprint resistant, meaning that the Kobo Glo is suited for many environments. The Kobo Glo also supports 8 font styles, with up to 24 font sizes as well as the option to customize weight and sharpness of the text. The Kobo Glo comes in four different colors: black, gray, pink and blue.

Reading in the Dark

The most defining feature of the Kobo Glo is the ComfortLight technology, which utilizes nano-printed fiber optic films along the display to spread the light distribution across the screen. This avoids the problem of the uneven lightness spread across the reading surface that previous attempts at read-in-the-dark e-ink readers have suffered. While this technology as well as the anti-glare capabilities of the device leads to loss of contrast in the text, there is the option to increase sharpness and weight of the text which allows users to mitigate the loss of contrasts through personal settings.