The underdog strikes back
Kobo drops cheaper-than-Kindle touch e-reader this June,
writes Divyanshu Dutta Roy

Like pretty much everything else, I am quite excited about the Kobo Touch e-reader. And here’s why: the price tag. Not only is it a touch-based e-reader (ooh!) with e-ink display (which unlike LCDs, you can read under sunlight without squinting), but it also comes at $130. Yes, Kobo, the "perpetual e-reader underdog" as Techland calls it, trumps the de-facto e-reader Amazon Kindle (that gets a year old this summer) by $10 and offers a touch feature like Sony’s latest Reader Touch Edition, but at a cool $100 less than the Japanese giant.

The 6-inch-display device comes with a faster (than the earlier model Kobo Wireless) Freescale i.MX508 processor, 1GB of internal storage (about 1,000 books) a micro SD card slot of up to 32GB of removable storage, Wi-Fi, onscreen keyboard and drops this June (and July worldwide).

The list price of $129.99 also packs in a $10 gift card to get you started on the e-book purchases, but, of course, you wouldn’t have to buy all the stuff that you want to read since the Kobo Touch also does ePub, PDF, and Adobe DRM.

It also comes with 12 font sizes, an included Merriam-Webster Dictionary, desktop syncing software and a social reading-thingy ‘Reader Life’ that rewards you on your reading speed, frequency, etc complete with Twitter and Facebook hooks.

The Kobo Touch, measuring 114mm x 165mm, drops its predecessor’s fat-ugly-button-loaded bezel that even had a directional pad (seriously, it made the thing look prehistoric) and takes on a much sleeker look with just one Home button on the front.

The back panel of the device remains the same, sporting a quilted, textured style, in four colors — black, lilac, blue, and silver. Early hands-on-reviews hint towards quite a likeable device with an intuitive interface.

With the Amazon Kindle older by an year, Barnes & Noble pushing their Nook closer to becoming a full-featured Android tablet and Sony as usual totally ignoring the entry level market, the Kobo Touch e-reader seems like a pretty good deal.

The device, which PC World says redefines "what entry-level e-readers look like", also pushes down the Kobo Wireless below the fabled $100 mark (even if just by a penny) and could end up being the Wi-Fi to the PlayStations and XBoxes by Amazon, Sony and what-not.