Kobo Elipsa 2E | eReader | 10.3” Glare-Free Touchscreen with ComfortLight PRO | Includes Kobo Stylus 2 | Adjustable Brightness | Wi-Fi | Carta E Ink Technology | 32GB of Storage

I purchased this Elipsa 2e primarily for reading, not note taking, and find it an excellent device for that purpose. I like the 10.3” screen size which allows for larger text sizes. And there is plenty of room for using Gestures and QuickMenus while using KOReader. And it arrived very quickly which I appreciated.

I am very happy with this Kobo reader. I've owned kindles over the years, but the screens were too small and it was annoying to get books from outside the amazon ecosystem installed. The Kobo has its own ecosystem/web store, which seems fine. I am more interested in reading public domain and other non-copy protected books. For that, I find that the built in web browser is great; you just point it at the Epub site you are using, and download directly. For academic papers (JSTOR), this would be an OUTSTANDING reader, since it handles PDFs very nicely. The 10 inch screen is a must for PDFs. The pen and note taking abilities are a great bonus as well. I find that the pen keeps up amazingly well with rapid handwriting; no irritating lag at all. Very well executed firmware and UI, in my opinion.

This is my first e-reader, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. When I got the box, I was impressed by its slim design and great packaging. When I read the dimensions on the site, I questioned that this may be a bit large for what I want, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the size is perfect. It’s large enough that I can either 1) fit an awful lot of text on the page or 2) make the letters really big. The text is crisp and easy to read, even when the lighting isn’t perfect. The backlight is easily adjustable so that I can keep it dark when the lights are out. The stylus has a good feel to it, but I had to disable the setting where a simple touch would turn the page in order to use the stylus effectively. It would change the page before the stylus could begin writing. That’s a simple fix, and I was glad to do it. The screen, as a side note, has a lovely paper like feeling to it. It feels like a high quality paper that you would get in a hard back. It is a bit heavy for what it is. Think of it as the same as hardback book. This doesn’t detract from the experience. The menus are easy to navigate and it has plenty of features if you want more than just a basic e-reader. The note taking is smooth and easy, and it’s lovely that it can sync with several different online services for backup and transfer. The reading app itself is easy to use and syncs flawlessly with my phone, so I can read on the go whenever I want to. It never loses my place. I’ve been reading with it for over a week now and haven’t had to recharge it, and it charged fast the first time. Those are the pros. There’s really only the one con, but it’s a biggy. The Kobo app’s search feature is terrible. A friend of mine is an author with works on Kobo. His Author name is “Eric Dakota”, and when I went to search for him, I got one of his books on the first page, the rest was each and every book with Dakota or Eric anywhere in the description, title, or author name. It taps out at 39 pages, and it only had one of his books listed. However, all of his books are on Kobo. On the e-reader, there is no way to force it to limit its searches to Author, Series, or Title. On the phone app, it has them, but it doesn’t work very well. I was at least able to find all of Eric’s books that way with a little poking around. While I don’t regret my purchase, it’s nuts that they want me to buy all of my books from them, then make them hard to find. In addition, their prices are much higher than they ought to be. Be prepared to shell out a lot of money for the books. I do want to point out that more of the money gets to the author, which is why I’ll swallow the pill and pay it, but that’s something that you need to be aware of when you buy the reader. This is a great way of supporting the author, but if budget is an issue, you’ll need to buy your books on a different site and transfer them over. This all breaks down to this: the ereader is awesome. It does what you want it to do. My complaints all center on the software and should be fixable with an update. I’ll update this when they do.

The device was shipped very fast it came from Amazon Warehouse and not directly from Kobo-Rakuten Canada. All good for 24 hours until the Stylus 2 stopped working. It's dead. Defective from the factory I presume. Also, the first Kobo I owned that is not made in Taiwan, it's made in China. Not trying to use "guilty by association" but just feel that there's always something wrong that is obvious and some not so much but will rear its ugly head soon enough. Anyway, though I'd like to just keep using it, I just don't feel comfortable as I am a bit nervous about what else will eventually fail prematurely. Lastly, I have purchased the Elipsa to mainly leverage its large screen to read PDFs and annotate with its writing capabilities. However, there are two major flaws. First, although the PDF can be enlarged or shrunk to fit the entire screen, the letter contrast on the screen could be clearer and there's no way to customize it. I have no such issue with my Remarkable 2 with contrast - and it is sharper and has nearly unlimited levels of grayness which allows it to reproduce illustrations way better than the Kobo. Second, once I resize it on the screen, it's very easy to knock it off alignment then I need to re-adjust it again over and over, this is very annoying. I also noticed that it lacks the feature where if I want to change a page, it does not allow me to use either a "tap & swipe" or "swipe" but no "tap only" So back to my point, Remarkable 2 is hands down better for PDF but does not have backlighting and very limited features as a capable Reader. Another handicap is its writing capability. It's not terrible but it's not great either. My benchmark is Remarkable 2. It does not come close. The writing capability of the Kobo Elipsa 2 feels ancient compares to the Remarkable 2. First, the marker needs to be charged before you can use it; RM2 does not. Second, when writing on the screen, RM2 feels like real paper; the Kobo Elipsa 2 feels like you're writing on the car's windshield. And the lag is quite noticeable as the pen is far ahead of where the actual line shows up. And there's no way to adjust the thickness of the lines. Lastly, the pen feels like it's hovering over the screen whereby the RM2, appears as the line and the market tip are touching each other as you write. Elipsa 2E does have more features for reading eBooks but the display with its lower resolution and lack of finite shades of grades severely handicaps being a good PDF reader. Another issue is that I purchased the OEM sleep cover with the Elipsa 2E which is very expensive. I've had a good experience with Clara 2E's OEM sleepover so I took a chance. Other than its ability to provide that auto-sleeping capability, it lacks two major functions. Ability to use it as a stand such as the Clara 2E's sleep cover (origami folding stand) and provide protection for the back of the unit. It has neither. Not only that, the part that bends wobbles so when closed, the magnetic part pulls the bottom side down which misaligns where the top corner is exposed. You have to slide it down then it aligns. Poor Q/A in my opinion, and this is also another reason I try to stay away from products made in China. They always seem to have some issue in the beginning or eventually and you wind up hating it over time. I rarely had this issue with Kobos made in Taiwan.

I ordered this for my GF about a year and a half ago. Best gift idea ever. It works well with Google drive. You can import pdfs, school work, ect. Has a pen that you can put notes on literally anything you want. She loves it and uses it daily. Charge lasts forever too.

I absolutely love this thing. Sure during more complex operations in the advanced notebook, it can take a second. Getting used to the stylus takes time, but the build quality, the feeling of the materials, the lightness, I absolutely love using this thing. I have been part of the Kobo ecosystem for a few years, so all of my books besides a couple are on Kobo. Because of this, setup took about 3 minutes. It's not necessarily a great budget e-reader, it's fairly expensive, but in comparison to other e-reader/note taking e-ink devices, it's a good deal to me. My unit did come with a small defect in the surface of the screen, but I anticipate using this thing and getting it fairly banged up for a long time, so whatever. I absolutely love sitting down and just reading on this device. I have made notebooks and folders etc for my business classes to help me have quick and easy to review notes on accounting specifics, then I can throw my headphones on and sit and read Andy Weir books and get lost in the stories. Pure love for this thing.

I expected to like this product a lot more than I actually do. It's driven me crazy for years that kindle can't manage to allow on page note taking, which is very important to me. So I jumped ship a few months ago because I live under a rock and had never heard of Kobo. And you can definitely take notes as advertised, which for me gives it a decisive win vs the kindle. But if you're not a fanatic about that feature then kindle is the way to go. And if you just want to highlight rather than actually write on the page, kindle is much smoother. The kobo underlining feature is pretty cumbersome. In addition, the Kobo screen freezes up A LOT. It eventually unfreezes then it often goes jumping around if you've pushed stuff trying to unfreeze it (lesson learned: be patient) That major bug definitely slows down your reading. Downloading newly purchased books can often be a chore as well, at least relative to kindle. I don't care as much about the screen brightness and color, but kindle definitely wins in that category as well. Lastly, I'm not sure if it's because I'm left handed but the Kobo tends to jump to another page or do something else unasked for much more than a kindle. I, like many people, wish kindle and kobo could get together and create the perfect e-reader. For now, I actually stick mostly to print books unless I'm in the mood for a somewhat bumpy ride with Kobo.

It's a useful device for those who enjoy reading on an ereader. The screen is delightful in its adjustability and in its clarity. The 10.3 screen is perfect for adjusting the font size so that reading glasses can be left in the drawer. With any good luck Amazon will perfect the software to allow the user to write notes directly on all ebooks; and conversion to text will be more straightforward than currently available on the devices. And someday color will be introduced by Amazon to the higher end ereaders. But today we are left with less than vivid screens that are efficient but remarkable bland.