First Look review: Kobo eReader Touch is company's best device yet

It's another successful redo of an e-book reader: On the heels of the new Nook Simple Touch Reader, the superior successor to the first-generation Nook, there's now the surprisingly good (and very light) Kobo eReader Touch.

Surprising because Kobo's new device performed far better in our preliminary tests than its predecessors, including the middling Kobo Wireless eReader. Indeed, the Kobo Touch appears to be in the same league overall as the best e-book readers in our Ratings (available to subscribers).

Like the new Nook, the Kobo eReader Touch has a 6-inch touch screen that uses the latest generation of energy-frugal E Ink display technology, known as Pearl. In preliminary evaluations, type on the Kobo screen looked about as readable as that of the Nook and the Kindle, which also use Pearl screens.

In fact, the Touch may offer the easiest read of any device for those who are sight-impaired. As the photo at left (click to enlarge) shows, its largest type size (left) is humongous, more than 10 percent larger than the Kindle (right), which formerly had the largest type we'd ever seen. While most bookworms will never want such oversize lettering, it could be a boon for those for whom a few additional picas in type size can make the difference between type that blurs and type they can actually read.

For those who care about such things, the Kobo does offer a smaller selection of typefaces (just two) than either the Nook or the Kindle, which each boast half a dozen. And our informal tests suggest the Touch falls short of the Kindle in the speed of its page turns (the Kindle is still the speed king in our tests), but it's a little faster than the Nook.

You navigate the Touch entirely via the touchscreen. Unlike the Nook Simple Touch Reader, there is no alternative option to turn pages via bars on each side of the screen. Nor can you fast-forward back and forth through multiple pages by holding those bars down, as you can on the Simple Touch—though the Kobo does allow you to summon up an onscreen slider that you can use to zoom forward and back through the book.

And then there's the Touch's weight. In a category where even fractions of an ounce are significant, it weighs 6.6 ounces, nearly a whole ounce less than the Nook Simple Touch, which is itself two-tenths of an ounce lighter than the Kindle. (Curiously, that weight, measured in our lab, is lighter than the manufacturer's claimed weight for the device, which is 7.05 ounces.)

Bottom line: This new Kobo is a little ahead of its key competitors—the Nook and Kindle—in some respects, and a little behind them in others. Either way, while it breaks no new ground, it appears to be a viable competitor in what is becoming an increasingly interesting market for standalone e-book readers.

We'll continue our testing of the new Kobo and add it to our e-book reader Ratings soon.

—Paul Reynolds