In summary
The Clara Color is Kobo’s first e-reader with a color display and it shows. The interface and all the book covers that you are accustomed to seeing in shades of gray suddenly appear in color. You can also read picture books and color picture books, but not all content seems to work equally well. In color mode, the screen loses half its sharpness and many picture books become unreadably crisp, while most children’s books with large pictures are still easy to read. Not all content works equally well and that makes the 6-inch Clara not an attractive choice. If you want color, you’d better choose a larger size. If you think this is a nice size, Kobo also sells a black and white version: Clara BW.
Anyone who lived in the Netherlands in 1967 or in Belgium in 1971 may have experienced this: after years of black-and-white photos, I had color images on TV for the first time. That must have been a special experience. I recently experienced something similar when I picked up the Kobo Clara color for the first time. This e-reader is quite similar to the Kobo Clara 2E, but it has a color display and those colors pack a punch. The moment you turn on Clara Color for the first time, you’ll see the familiar Kobo interface, everything is in the same place, the difference is that everything is in color. Book covers that you always thought were black and white are suddenly colorful, and the navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen appear red instead of black. Kobo isn’t the first e-reader manufacturer to use a color screen, but it is the most popular e-reader brand in the Netherlands and Belgium, so that’s reason enough to check out.
Kobo released the Clara Color in April 2024, at the same time as the Libra Color. The Clara, the subject of this article, is Kobo’s cheapest color e-reader, with a 6-inch diagonal screen and a resolution of 1448 x 1072 pixels. More on that precision later, because these numbers only actually apply if you’re black and white. White The recommended retail price for the Clara Color is €160, but it’s also now available for around €150.
Libra Color is the bigger brother of Clara and has a 7-inch screen diagonal. It uses the same Kaleido 3 technology from E Ink and has a black and white resolution of 1680 x 1264 pixels. Basic information is shown on the next page of this Color screen technology is discussed and this also applies to the Libra color. The pixel density of both displays is exactly the same, the difference being that the Libra’s display is also different in that it has two physical buttons for turning pages. From a book and because it works with a pen to jot down notes or highlights.
Kobo Clara Color with black back (left) and Kobo Clara 2E
For this review, Kobo sent us the Clara Color and we compared it with the Clara 2E, which has an E Ink Carta 1200 display and can only display black and white. Kobo has already released a successor to the Clara 2E, in the form of the Clara BW, which has a Carta 1300 screen. That will be a small upgrade over the Carta 1200. The recommended retail price for the Clara BW is €140. However, in this article the focus is on the Clara Color and specifically the color screen, because while testing the e-reader I quickly discovered that the color screen is not an upgrade in all respects. To understand why, it’s a good idea to think about the way these e-readers display black and white.