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Reviews of Kobo’s new waterproof ebook reader are still few and far between, so when this next video came across my desk yesterday I knew that everyone would want to see it.
I’m still working on my review of Kobo’s new waterproof ebook reader, but yesterday Laptop Magazine posted a short hands on video.
From the background noise, I think they shot it at the launch party a couple weeks ago. The video was shot at IFA Berlin. It doesn’t show much, but it does confirm that the Aura H2O has a way to detect water on the screen and warn you that the device got wet. It looks pretty cool in action.
The Aura H2O features a 6.8″ Carta E-ink screen, and recently went up for pre-order in the US with a retail of $179. My review unit arrived a couple days ago, and I hope to have a review up next weekend.
I find it a little strange that the thing throws up a massive dialog box every time it gets a drop of water on it. I would expect a “waterproof” device to ignore water unless it was on the verge of failing. It doesn’t seem very bath-friendly if it interrupts reading with each arbitrary splash.
There is a setting to ignore water droplets on the screen; maybe it was disabled for the demo video.
The “IFA” lanyard around the presenter’s neck is a good hint that it was filmed at the IFA recently in Berlin. I think that post-dates the launch party.
I was confused that he also said it would read any *non* DRMed book from other stores. Well yes, but it’ll also read DRMed books from several other major stores that use proprietary Adobe DRM.
Yes, I missed that detail – twice. Thanks, for pointing it out.