Switching from Kindle to Kobo: Initial Thoughts

I’ve been an Amazon Kindle user for about 14 years. This week, when deciding whether to upgrade to the latest Kindle Paperwhite, I instead chose to switch to Kobo to explore its offerings.

There are a few reasons that influenced my decision to switch:

• It lessens my dependency on Amazon.
• Kobo has seamless integration with library books through Overdrive.
• Kobo integrates smoothly with Pocket for reading articles.

I went through a lengthy process when trying to decide what to get and even went down a rabbit hole, looking at the Supernote Nomad, Boox Go 7, and even the Kobo Libra Colour. Based on my past experience with the reMarkable 2 and Boox Palma, I decided to stick with something small and simple.

I went with the Kobo Clara Colour, a small 6" color e-ink reader.

When it arrived yesterday, my first impression was, “Oh my lord, that’s tiny.” I immediately thought I should have gone with the Libre, which is larger and has hardware buttons.

However, as I started using it, I began to appreciate its lightness. It’s almost as if I’m just holding my hand in front of me, without anything in it.

I’m happy I chose the color version. It adds a nice touch, and I’ve been wanting to read some graphic novels, so the color will be a treat.

I think I enjoy the Kobo interface better than the Kindle’s. There are some nice shortcuts built in to make it easy to adjust the brightness and even switch to previous books in a snap.

The integration with Overdrive for library books works seamlessly. The Pocket integration works great as well. While I’m not a fan of Pocket, simply creating an account to use the browser extension and the Share action in Feedbin makes it a breeze to add articles to the Kobo for reading.

I started tinkering with Calibre to try and get my books from Kindle, as well as some ePubs I already have, onto the Kobo. The ePubs worked great, while I’m still struggling with the Kindle books. I’ve followed some online tutorials and tried multiple Calibre plugins, but I’m still not able to successfully download my Kindle books in the format Calibre needs to convert them to ePub. I’m not worried about it, though. I think I’m going to keep my Kindle anyway since I have probably hundreds, if not thousands, of ebooks and audiobooks on it already.

I’ll be sure to post any significant updates!