The Kobo Libra Colour is my favorite e-reader — and it's got a rare Prime Day discount
SAVE $40: Grab the Kobo Libra Colour for just $209.99 at Amazon as of July 8. This Prime Day deal saves you 16% off the e-reader's $249.99 list price.
When I first saw the Kobo Libra Colour about a year ago, I was interested in the color display — but I was way more taken with the buttons.
Admittedly, the Kobo was more expensive than most Kindles (though there wasn't a color Kindle available at the time). However, a perk of my job is sometimes I get to test products I'm personally interested in — so I tested the Kobo Libra, found it to be a great (if not excellent) e-reader. I hesitated to get my own with the steep cost, but I was lucky that my boyfriend decided to buy me one for my birthday after my testing period was over. If he hadn't, I would almost certainly be jumping on this Prime Day deal that brings the Kobo Libra Colour down to $209.99.
The Kobo Libra Color gets the occasional markdown from its $249.99 price tag, but not too often, and certainly not at a price that puts it just $10 away from its lowest price ever. While more expensive than the Kindle Colorsoft's current sale price of $179.99, I would argue that for anyone particularly invested in their e-reader's ergonomics, the Libra Colour is a device worth investing in. Its square shape keeps things compact without sacrificing display real estate, and the buttons, paired with the internal gyroscope, are a game changer. It switches the text direction with just the right amount of sensitivity when you switch the position of the e-reader, and allows you to use the buttons on the right or left side without a hitch.
Like the Kindle, the Kobo Libra Colour also has 32GB of storage, a seven-inch display, and an IPX8 waterproof rating. As for the color display, I can't say I use it that often. I love the color highlights when I'm in the mood to annotate, but I don't read that much actual color content. Still, I love that the covers of books appear in color. At the end of the day, I would probably spend $209 on an e-reader with the buttons in this shape — it's that good, and worth it (at least, until an e-reader maker gets it together and makes a budget model with buttons).
For all the pros, the Libra Colour does have its shortcomings: the tablet-like aspects aren't quite there due to some ghosting, lag, and inconsistent palm rejection. The color isn't crazy vibrant (more due to available tech than this specific e-reader), and it doesn't come with a case or stylus.
I'm also mainly a library user, so I appreciate this e-reader's Overdrive integration that allows me to download books from Libby straight to my Kobo. But because the Kobo doesn't allow you to use multiple library cards at once, it does limit taking full advantage of the Libby catalog if you're a library hopper. Kobo's store also runs more expensive than Amazon's, but if I'm not using the library, I generally prefer to avoid buying books on Amazon (or anywhere that's not supporting independent sellers) regardless.
Topics Books
Bethany Allard is a Los Angeles-based shopping reporter at Mashable covering beauty tech, dating, sex and relationships, and headphones. That basically means she puts her hair through a lot, scrolls through a lot of dating apps, and rotates through a lot of different headphones. In addition to testing out and rounding up the best products, she also covers deals for Mashable, paying an especially obsessive amount of attention to Apple deals and prices. That knowledge comes in handy when she's covering shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, which she's now done for three years at Mashable.
