Kobo Glo vs Kindle Paperwhite

Kobo Glo vs Kindle Paperwhite comparison, in case you are looking for an eReader and wondering which one to buy.

Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite is now available in Canada, yes it is! and you can buy it in Canadian Dollars right from the comfort of your home. However, is this really tempting enough to sway Canadian Customers from the local favourite Kobo Glo ?

Kobo Glo vs Kindle Paperwhite Comparison Table

Features	Kobo Glo	Kindle Paperwhite
Size	157 x 114 x 10 mm	169 x 117 x 9.1 mm
Thickness	10 mm	9.1 mm
Weight	185 grams	213 grams
Display	6″ E-ink XPA Pearl	6″ Paperwhite
Resolution	212 PPI	221 PPI
Storage	1,000 Books	1,100 Books
Battery Life	1 Month	2 Months
Expandable Memory	Up to 32GB with Micro SD Card	No
Cloud Storage	No	Yes
Interface	Touch Screen	Touch Screen
Formats	EPUB, PDF, TXT, RTF	AZW, MOBI, PDF, TXT
Network	WiFi	WiFi & 3G
Price	$129	$139~199

Form Factor

Both Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo have excellent Build quality. Kobo Glo features a soft-touch quilted back and is available in five colors. Kindle Paperwhite comes in an attractive black finish and features a soft-touch-painted back panel.

Those who prefer the small form factor will be delighted with Kobo Glo, this eReader is really small and light-weight. It is advantage Kobo Glo in this round#1 for managing to keep Kobo Glo so much lighter and smaller.

Display

Both Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo offer similarly sized 6-inch E ink displays and make use of the same E-ink pearl technology, considered to be the latest and the best in ereader display technology.

Spec for Spec both eReaders appear evenly matched in this area. However, Kindle Paperwhite does offer a comparatively better contrast, darker text and more pixels (221 PPI compared to Kobo Glo’s 212 PPI).

Built-in Lighting

Both Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo feature built-in lighting, totally eliminating the need for purchasing any lighted ereader covers or other external sources of lighting.

Kindle Paperwhite definately has an edge here and we have no hesitation is stating that Amazon has almost perfected the use of light in an eReader.

The lighting in Kindle Paperwhite feels very much a part of the overall display, it brightens the background and improves the contrast.

In comparison, the lighting in Kobo Glo appears to wash out the text a bit and imparts a slight yellowish tint to the overall display. Kobo Glo allows you to turn off the lighting while the lighting on Kindle paperwhite is designed to be always on.

Touch Screen

Kindle Paperwhite features real capacitive touch screen as found in popular Touch-screen tablets. Kobo Glo makes use of infra-red technology to provide a touch screen like interface, similar to what is available in Kindle Touch.

In terms of user experience, capacitive touch screen is definitely more responsive. However, for the purpose of reading books there is not much of a difference between the two.

Storage

With Kobo Glo you can extend the storage capacity up to 32 GB by using a Micro-SD card. Kindle Papaerwhite provides 5GB of free cloud storage and unlimited cloud storage for anything that you purchase from Amazon.

We believe that storage is not an issue considering that standard 2GB storage is good enough for 1,000 books and most of us are not likely to exceed this mark.

Battery Life

The Battery life of Kobo Glow is rated to last a month with WiFi off. Kindle Paperwhite has a better stated battery life of about 2 months with WiFi turned off and lights on.

Supported File Formats

Kobo Glo supports the widely available EPUB format, this means that you can buy books from anywhere and read them on Kobo Glo. In comparison, Kindle paperwhite does not support the open EPUB format and ties you to buying books from Amazon.

Kobo Glo vs Kindle Paperwhite | Conclusion

The availability of Kindle Paperwhite in Canada does provide Canadian customers with a choice of owning the worlds most popular eReader. It will be interesting to see how many Canadians will actually be swayed.