Kobo Elipsa review: Why the big-screen e-book reader is a good library but an average notebook

While televisions, tablets and smartphones keep getting bigger, gadget-makers decided e-book readers should shrink. Most now offer screens of just six or seven inches, or about the size of a page torn from a paperback. This makes them comfortable to hold for long periods (and less likely to hurt your face if you drift off to sleep), but it doesn’t suit anyone who likes big text, lots of words on each page, or scanning a large electronic library. Kobo’s solution is to go bigger and bolder. The company’s $599 Kobo Elipsa, available for pre-order now, boasts a generously sized 10.3-inch touchscreen more akin to a page from a glossy, hardcover tome. The screen features subtle, adjustable backlighting, a resolution of 227 pixels per inch, and is more responsive than most thanks to a quad-core, 1.8GHz chip, and 1GB RAM. And, this e-book reader is also the first to arrive with its own stylus. Battery-powered and easy to hold, this pen will let readers annotate, highlight, and even doodle over your favourite passages, returning to these notes later in a list saved with the title. It’s an addition that should prove handy for most readers but particularly useful for students. The Kobo Elipsa will also let users set up digital notebooks in which they can pen letters or essays and have the e-book reader convert handwriting to text. Even hand-drawn diagrams can be digitised and shared. But Kobo’s ambition is somewhat stymied by its hardware. The e-book reader, while faster than many of its peers, is still prone to lag. Plus, if you want to share your notes, you must either connect this device to a computer or set up a Dropbox account. There are no further options. If you consider this device as an advanced e-book reader, the Kobo Elipsa excels. As a digital notebook, it is more challenging to use.