Most of the GadgetGuy team has a hand in writing the site, and we all love reading. It’s one of those important things for keeping your mind in tip-top shape, and some of us even go home and try to write our own books.
These days, technology has given the proper printed book a break with e-paper, and while we still totally love our physical pages, it’s nice to see some new entrants in the electronic book space coming from Kobo.
There are four models heading to stores in Australia, comprising of three tablets and one proper electronic ink reader with screen technology designed to emulate that of the printed page, effectively resulting in a device that looks like paper, but only works as an eReader.
That’s different to the tablets, which Kobo is releasing in the Arc range.
There’s the 10 inch Arc 10HD which features the NVidia Tegra 4 quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, and the higher-than-Full-HD res of 2560×1600, showing off a massive 302 pixels per inch which is higher than the Retina-grade panel on Apple’s iPad 3/4 tablets.
The Arc 10HD won’t be hitting stores until October 16, but when it does it will bring almost 10 hours of battery life, Android, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi, and support for wireless Miracast streaming.
A couple of seven inch tablets will also be coming, called the Arc 7 and Arc 7 HD. Similar in design, these two models differ mostly in specs, and while the HD will come with a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, and a 1920×1080 Full HD panel, the Arc 7 will carry reduced specs with a 1024×600 panel, 1.2GHz quad-core processor (not Tegra), and 1GB RAM.
Like the Arc 10HD, the sevens won’t be coming until October 16, but will cost $249.95 for the 16GB and $299.95 for the 32GB Arc 7HD, while the not-so-HD model will come in at $199.95 for 8GB of storage.
The last model in Kobo’s new range is a proper eReader, with reading books and magazines being the primary purpose this one has been developed. Released as the Kobo Aura, this model includes Kobo’s front-lighting technology and a reasonably high resolution screen capable of 212 dots per inch.
Even though it’s not one of the touchscreen tablets, touch is still supported, with pinch to zoom support built in, 4GB storage, a microSD slot for more, and a battery supporting up to two months of life, with the Aura arriving on September 16 for $189.95.
