Kobo have just announced their new Android tablet on twitter. It is alread up for pre-order on their website.
The Kobo Vox is a 7″ Android tablet with a capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1024×600. It is running Android v2.3 on an 800MHz CPU. The internal Storage is 8GB and expandable by SD card. It also has a speaker, and a headphone jack.
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Well, the best news is, e-readers constantly are getting cheaper at a increasing speed.
The new Kobo e-reader with touchscreen costs about $129, the older Kobo Wireless drops to $99.
Kobo is introducing a new model touchscreen e-reader priced at $129, dropping the price of its earlier model to $99. The new Kobo has the same ultra-sharp Pearl e-ink display as the Kindle 3 / DXG. It also comes with a better processor than in the older Kobo, a touch-sensitive screen (with gestures such as swiping and zooming), and a built-in dictionary. The touchscreen uses zForce infrared and thus will not interfere with the sharpness of the screen.
Still, in my opinion touchscreens on e-readers are a bad idea! First you will have a lot of finger prints and worse stuff on your screen, which will hinder your sight in bright light, second because of this effect you will constantly try to clean it by wiping it with some tissue and finally will end up with scratches, you will see.
Besides this, the Kobo is still at a bit of a disadvantage compared to the Kindle or Nook given the trouble its chain retail store partner Borders is having. But it is a decent e-reading device and the price drop will put new pressure on Amazon and B&N.
There is a video on youtube where an e-reader owner compares different e-reader displays with an airport approach chart. He has got actually a Youtube Channel with even more videos.
Here is the video that shows 5 e-readers displaying the same chart. In this comparison there is one flaw, when he says you can not turn the Kindle DX to landscape mode in order to zoom the shown pdf. Actually you can by just turning the DX and then it would show the graphics in a much more zoomed state than any of the other readers.
Only one day after a price drop for the Barnes & Noble nook, Amazon reduced the price for the Kindle 2.
The nook fell from $259 to $199, a new WiFi only nook costs merely $149. In response, Amazon has cut the price of the popular Kindle from $259 to $189. In contrast to the nook the Kindle is a 3G only device but with global wireless connection for free!
Since even a bare bone device like the new Kobo reader costs about $149 it seems that the price war is just about to begin and we will see some major price drops within the next few weeks.
My guess is, that low end devices like the Kobo will cost no more then $49 by the end of the year.
