Announced earlier in the year, Kobo’s range of Kindle competing products has hit retail, not only offering the eBook space some new gadgets, but also giving Google’s Nexus 7 some friendly competition.
Kobo showed its hand in September shortly before – one day, in fact – Amazon showed its own slate of new products. Unlike Amazon, though, most of Kobo’s gear was coming to Australia.
And now, it’s here, with the Kobo Mini, Glow, and Arc hitting retail this week, just in time for the holiday season.
“We are excited to bring these new eReaders to our Australian customers,” said Kobo’s Director of Vendor Relations for the Asia Pacific region, Malcolm Neil.
“Kobo at its core is a company of booklovers and the Arc tablet as well as the Glo and Mini eReaders were designed with booklovers in mind. The result is three sleek, lightweight devices that are easy to use and comfortable to hold, giving consumers choice.”
The prices range from $99 to $349, with the lowest of these ($99) grabbing you the Kobo Mini, a 5 inch no-glare electronic ink reader with 2GB storage for support of up to 1,000 books.
Next up is the Glo (above), an eReader with a 6 inch e-ink 1024×758 screen with front-lighting, making it possible – and more importantly, comfortable – to read your books where ever you are, day or night.
The Glo features a touchscreen, WiFi, and the same 2GB of internal memory supporting up to 1,000 books, but also features microSD expansion, allowing you to add up to 32GB more memory in case you’re an avid reader.
Kobo’s Glo starts comes in at $160RRP, but there’s also a tablet version out, offering Google’s Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” in a 7 inch form-factor.
Available from $250 RRP, the Arc (pictured above) comes pre-loaded with Quickflix and features tech we’ve seen across other Android tablets, including a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, storage between 16 and 64GB, WiFi, Bluetooth, and according to Kobo can survive a drop of 1.5 metres.
All three should be available in stores across Australia this week, a little late from the expected October release date.
