back to article Kobo Mini 5in compact e-reader review

If you think the Kindles and Nooks of this world are too large, Kobo has an alternative: the Mini, a pocket-sized e-ink e-reader with a 5in screen. Kobo Mini Kobo's Mini: pocket friendly for your e-paperbacks Most e-readers out there have 6in panels, but the Mini’s is no less readable for the reduction in size. Kobo’s own …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Pirate

    Two questions:

    1) how does it handle a large quantity of books - four or five hundred? On the Touch, it can get silly slow moving from reading a book to selecting another, or while it gets it act together after recharging - a couple of minutes, sometimes.

    2) is the Windows application for managing purchased books (no Linux application, naturally, even though this is Linux box) the same as for the Touch? If it is, you'll find that it displays only those books downloaded from Kobo and not anything you might have otherwise acquired - and my entire collection at present is epubs not acquired from Kobo... The excellent 'Calibre' handles things properly, which is a relief and a credit to its writer.

    1. frank ly

      Re: only those books downloaded from Kobo

      This is the case for my Glo reader and I think it's to be expected. If it could sync and display all your sideloaded content (which would have to be possible on any PC you logged in from), then it would have to upload that content to the Kobo servers and then download to the PC (or provide page content on demand). Apart from the data transfer and storage burden on the Kobo servers, that might cause legal problems for them.

      I can't think of any use for the Kobo PC-app apart from buying books, or getting freebies, from Kobo. As far as I can see, Calibre is the gold standard for management of an e-book collection and gives you the tools to make an e-book suitable for any reader device.

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: only those books downloaded from Kobo

        It would be nice, on occasion, if it would allow downloading from the reader to a local PC store, though. I'm not sure the Kobo servers need to get involved.

        But I resolved the issue I had with Calibre...

  2. MrWibble
    Thumb Up

    It's currently £50 until the end of the month:

    http://www.whsmith.co.uk/eReaders/KoboMinieReader.aspx

  3. frank ly

    Format and margins

    " ...manually loaded books - ... - don’t take notice of margin settings, ..."

    I noticed this problem with many .epub books in my collection and .mobi books I converted for my recently acquired Kob Glo. They also did not allow you to adjust font, etc and the Glo often locked up if I tried manual adjustment.

    The way to deal with this is to reconvert them in Calibre with the Look and Feel -> Filter Style Information -> Fonts checkbox and Margins checkbox ticked, after which they display properly with full control available to you.

  4. Simon Dick

    Activation

    Strange, I managed to activate my Kobo Glo via WiFi, no software or USB needed, pretty sure the Mini would do the same

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Always the way. Someone makes a product that is the right size and some cheap company makes something smaller (for cheapness reasons) and then markets it as an advantage.

    An ebook reader is a similar size to a book, that's why you tend to see them all around the same size. I don't see many people reading small books.

  6. Mike Brown

    2gb? But only 1 for books?

    What on earth is it doing with reserving 1gb of memory?

    1. Matthew Collier

      Re: 2gb? But only 1 for books?

      What it's using that 1GB for is a) it's OS b) it's recovery partition (so that you can always reset it back to factory defaults, no matter how broken it might be from a software perspective) c) space for it's internal workings (SQLite DB, image files for book covers, config info etc.).

      As someone else has already said, you can activate via WiFi if you want to, no PC needed (and you don't *have* to activate it at all, if you don't want to ;) )

      Calibre and ePubs sideloaded, FTW :)

  7. Ian Yates
    Facepalm

    I especially liked the low-quality jpeg showing how good text looks on the screen.

  8. calonddraig

    Size is everything... bigger please.

    Great, an even smaller eyestrain-inducing device. Most of my reading these days is academic papers and expert periodical literature - most of which comes in A4 sized PDFs. I would _love_ an ereader with at least a 10'' if not A4 sized screen that could display these natively without a lot of fiddling. And I would be happy to pay up to £200 for it. Why not a tablet? Two reasons, battery life and eyestrain from a glowing screen.

  9. Popup
    Flame

    "The 600 x 800 panel actually comes from Vizplex not the usual suspect, E Ink"

    Nonsense!

    Vizplex is an internal code-name at E-Ink, for all their electrophoretic displays.

    The Kobo mini apparently uses a slightly older version (I'm not 100% sure how the 'VizPlex 110' relates to the 'Pearl' display that's used in all other current units.)

This topic is closed for new posts.