I posted my initial impressions of my new Kobo Glo here, and I’m now in a position to improve on my thoughts having read most of Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy on it by now as well as a couple of shorter books.
So my fears of not being able to use the Kobo Glo one-handed were unfounded. It did take some tweaks to the default settings, specifically you can set it up to turn pages by a simple tap, rather than a swipe, and the “next page” tap can be configured to be either on the left or the right side of the screen. I put it on the left, since I generally hold the reader in my left hand and this setup allows me to go to the next page via a thumb-tap.
The battery was down to about 50% after about 3 weeks of on-and-off reading, but I did use the backlight extensively. Still, when you have to charge your mobile phone every day these days, having to charge your eReader once a month doesn’t seem such a problem – the biggest issue is actually remembering to do so before heading off on a trip!
I still think the bezel is a bit too big, but it fits into my coat-pocket so no huge issue there and I’ve gotten used to it. All up I haven’t had any problems comfort-wise holding the Kobo Glo, even during an 11 hour flight.
I’ve also worked out how to sort books by Series (or whatever other criteria you like) by setting up Calibre to create custom Collections. There’s a good article on how to do so on the MobileRead forum here. So while the on-device book management remains somewhat primitive, using eBook management software mitigates these issues.
So what do I think of the Kobo Glo now? I’d give it 4/5. Not perfect, but definitely usable.
