This budget eReader is easy to use, but its features don't match the price.

A few months ago when the Kobo Reader first hit the scene, its $149 price made it one Dell Vostro 1710 Battery of the most attractive 6-inch eReaders in the market. Yes, the device is pretty basic, but being more than $100 cheaper than the competition meant a few sacrifices. As long as the reading experience was up to snuff, right? But then the competition pulled the rug out from under Kobo: Barnes & Noble introduced a Wi-Fi-only Dell Latitude E4300 Battery version of the Nook for the same price, and Amazon announced a Wi-Fi-only Kindle for $139. So can this novice-friendly eReader still stand up to fuller-featured rivals?
Design

With its minimalist design, Kobo's offering definitely looks the part of a budget eReader, but the device doesn't looks cheap. Instead, it gives the Dell Latitude E6500 Battery impression that it's easy to use, which will appeal to consumers who aren't as comfortable with technology as early adopters. Picking up the Reader, it's surprisingly light, just 7.8 ounces to the Nook's 12.1 ounces. Kobo's Reader measures 7.2 x 4.7 x 0.4 inches, only Sony VGP-BPS9 Battery a little smaller than Barnes & Noble's device (7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches). It's also comfortable to hold due to the light weight, rounded edges, and rubber-esque, quilted back.

The Reader has just two ports, an SD Card on top and a mini-USB port on the bottom for charging Sony VGP-BPS9/B Battery or connecting to a computer. Buttons for Home, Menu, Display and Back (not Previous Page) line the lower left edge of the device, and a five-way D-Pad for navigation and page turning sits on the right corner of the device. The five small raised bumps on this pad, one for each direction and another in the center, is a nice touch.
Interface

This simplicity in design continues on the inside Sony VGP-BPS9A/B Battery of the Kobo Reader as well. The Home screen shows the most recently read books and your place in them. From the Menu you can access the Books and Documents screens, which list all available titles and files. Other than that, there's just the Settings and Sync options. There are no other features, functions, or games.

We found the Kobo Reader's interface easy to understand and navigate right off the bat, which should again please less tech-savvy users. However, we VGP-BPS9/S wish that the software gave us more options for sorting or organizing books, such as user-defined collections, as the basic By Title/By Author/By Last Read options can be tedious to browse, especially with a large library. Since the Reader comes with 100 public domain books preloaded, this is an issue right out Sony Laptop Battery of the box. At least the software allows users to skip to the letter they want when sorted by title or author.