The Kobo Glo and Kobo Mini e-readers have arrived this week in Canada and the UK, according to the company’s blog.
In Canada the two new pieces of hardware are available in Indigo Music & Books, Future Shop and Best Buy, while in the UK they can be bought only in WHSmith.
Rakuten-owned Kobo said:
The timing is perfect as the seasons change, giving Kobo customers the first opportunity to curl up, relax and read on their stylish and innovative new eReader.
If you say so. The Kobo Glo is notable for its ‘ComfortLight’ technology, which uses a soft, adjustable back light to ensure that it can be read at night with the lights off. If you’ve ever used a games console or tablet in pitch black before, you’ll know that it can quickly strain the eyes, so hopefully with the Kobo Glo you’ll be able to keep reading for long periods of time. It also has a 6-inch screen and expandable microSD storage.
The Kobo Mini on the other hand is the company’s smaller offering. So small in fact, that Kobo is claiming it to be “the world’s smalled full-featured eReader”. However, the interpretation of ‘full-featured’ can no doubt be debated against its Kindle and Nook competition. With a 5-inch touch screen and 2GB of built-in storage, it’s definitely the more basic of the two.
Not everything is perhaps as rosy as Kobo is making out though. Nate Hoffeider at The Digital Reader thinks the firm “screwed up” the launch, because they are both unavailable to order on the Kobo website. He later asks why there aren’t any details on when both e-readers will be available in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, or other regions. No answers from here I’m afraid.
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Last month we reported how Kobo’s e-readers were coming to Portugal, along with the launch of its digital bookstore.
Today’s blog post from Kobo also reveals that the long awaited Kobo Arc, the company’s 7 inch Android tablet, will be available to customers in November.
The device will run on Android 4.0, otherwise known as Ice Cream Sandwich, have a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera and be available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions.
Image credit: KIMIHIRO HOSHINO / AFP / Getty Images
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