Catch Me Up on Kobos...Please?

[buffaloseven]

Hey everyone,

Lurking for a long time now, used to be more active years and years back. Reality is...I picked up an Aura H2O v2 years back when they came out and I've been...very happy with it.

Seeing that there's now a colour e-ink with the Clara and I'm intrigued to update. I do read comics and graphic novels on my Kobo so having colour as an option would be a huge boon. That said...I'm not sure if colour is a compelling enough reason to upgrade right now, especially when we're on one of the first revisions of the devices.

So I'm just curious...I've been pleasantly out of the loop for years now; if I were to upgrade to a new Clara or something like that, what sort of improvements would I notice from my Aura H2O v2? I did a bit of looking myself but couldn't really figure out an easy-to-digest understanding.

Thanks to anyone who can catch me up!

[DNSB]

Faster CPUs and more storage. USB-C connection which on my Libra Colour gives faster file transfers and charging.

My grandkids love the Libra Colour since their kiddie books are mostly in colour (the only issue is keeping the youngest from taste testing...). The colour version do have a darker screen so I keep the frontlight at a higher level which chews up more of the larger battery the Libra Colour has compared to the Libra 2. Neither the Libra Colour nor the Clara Colour are going to be replacements for a photo frame but my daughter loves them for reading comics and colour manga.

That said, most of my personal reading is done on my Sage since these old eyes need a larger font.

One disadvantage from my point of view is that all three of the new models have eMMC storage so you no longer have the ease of replacing a µSD card to expand the internal storage. On the bright side, iFixit carries spare parts so replacing parts is not the issue it was for earlier Kobo models.

[buffaloseven]

Do you know if the colour screens would be darker than the eInk on the Aura H2O? I remember it was better than the Glo, but I imagine that contrast has gotten even better since back then?

I'm curious if the colour screen might be darker than its contemporaries, if it might be similar or better than older readers.

Otherwise faster CPUs and USB-C does sound pretty nice. I'm enjoying consolidating down towards a single cable.

I saw some mixed opinions on the colour quality on the Clara. Overall good enough, though?

More storage would be nice too since some graphic novels chew up a lot of space.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by buffaloseven

Do you know if the colour screens would be darker than the eInk on the Aura H2O? I remember it was better than the Glo, but I imagine that contrast has gotten even better since back then?

The eInk layer contrast is better since it is a Carta 1300 screen. The problem is the colour filter layer which soaks up quite a bit of light. Comparing a Clara BW to a Clara Colour, the colour screen looks much darker.

Originally Posted by buffaloseven

I'm curious if the colour screen might be darker than its contemporaries, if it might be similar or better than older readers.

Comparing a Libra Colour to a Mini, the Mini has a lighter background. OTOH, the Mini does not have a frontlight.

Originally Posted by buffaloseven

I saw some mixed opinions on the colour quality on the Clara. Overall good enough, though?

More storage would be nice too since some graphic novels chew up a lot of space.

I wouldn't try to view photos on the Kaleido3 screen but for kids books, comics and manga, the quality is good enough. I was happy with 12-bit (4096 colours) images on my old Amiga back in the dim distances of the past.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by buffaloseven

Do you know if the colour screens would be darker than the eInk on the Aura H2O? I remember it was better than the Glo, but I imagine that contrast has gotten even better since back then?

I'm curious if the colour screen might be darker than its contemporaries, if it might be similar or better than older readers.

Otherwise faster CPUs and USB-C does sound pretty nice. I'm enjoying consolidating down towards a single cable.

I saw some mixed opinions on the colour quality on the Clara. Overall good enough, though?

More storage would be nice too since some graphic novels chew up a lot of space.

Compared to your Aura H2O, the screen of the Libra Colour is quite dark when reading black text. With normal light inside, you would need the light of the Libra Colour at about 20% to be as bright as the H2O with no light.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The eInk layer contrast is better since it is a Carta 1300 screen. The problem is the colour filter layer which soaks up quite a bit of light. Comparing a Clara BW to a Clara Colour, the colour screen looks much darker.

The reflectance of the coloured ink pattern reduces contrast.

Originally Posted by DNSB

I wouldn't try to view photos on the Kaleido3 screen but for kids books, comics and manga, the quality is good enough. I was happy with 12-bit (4096 colours) images on my old Amiga back in the dim distances of the past.

Sometimes even 4 bit EGA (16 ) or 8 bit VGA (256) will look better than kaleido. I had an Amiga too. It certainly was better than VGA for colours. But the Kaleido CFA unlike CRT phosphors, or any kind of colour LCD, only partially covers each mono eink pixel so there are only pastel shades at best. Nor can the palette be adjusted. Also if the mono eink panel calibration isn't perfect you don't get the 14 grey levels plus black and white, there might only be 12 levels. Judging from photos the Kaleido is far worse than 4096 Amiga or other colour display systems only having the variation from pastel to shades of murk.

Attached:
Photo someone here shared of Kobo with Kaleido 3.
What the source is (how it looks depends on what you are using)
Three test patterns for CRT / LCD / OLED / LED / QLED / Plasma displays.
All are just regular PC 16.7M colour, none are HDR.

[Quoth]

The gamma test: Partially close eyes or step back (so you can't see the structure) and adjust gamma so there are no darker or brighter bands in each column.

Edit:
Not usually available on any phone or tablet. Only some computer graphics cards have the adjustment.

[mergen3107]

Although True Tone on iPhones tries to match warmth of the surrounding light, as far gamma correction is concerned

[buffaloseven]

So the general gist of what I'm seeing is that...not much has changed. Newer B/W panels are slightly higher DPI...sounds like they're all around 300 DPI now, slightly better than my 265 DPI of the Aura H2O. The colour is pretty intriguing since I do read comics/manga/graphic novels, and I realized the other night my Aura is apparently extremely picky about which USB cables it will actually connect to any of my computers with these days.

I pretty much always have the front light on to some degree, so I might have to stop by my local book store and check out one of the new colour ones to see if the reduced screen contrast would bother me with the light on.

I'm also imagining since I read comics and such, I'd probably only want to consider the Libra Colour as it's much closer to the 6.8" display of my Aura H2O than the 6" Clara. My gut feeling is that 6" would be too small for various types of comics.

EDIT: Also credit to Kobo...I've pretty much been able to use this thing for years and years and barely think about it. Just works and does the job well.

[Aleron Ives]

If you read lots of comics, you might want to wait to see if Kobo releases a Sage Colour in the future, since 7" is still pretty small for that.

[buffaloseven]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

If you read lots of comics, you might want to wait to see if Kobo releases a Sage Colour in the future, since 7" is still pretty small for that.

A majority of my reading is still books, and I think that 7" is on the top end for portability for me as I take mine to work and back quite a bit. Good thought, though! I think if I really want a big screen for a comic I can just use my iPad.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by buffaloseven

So the general gist of what I'm seeing is that...not much has changed. Newer B/W panels are slightly higher DPI...sounds like they're all around 300 DPI now, slightly better than my 265 DPI of the Aura H2O. The colour is pretty intriguing since I do read comics/manga/graphic novels, and I realized the other night my Aura is apparently extremely picky about which USB cables it will actually connect to any of my computers with these days.

But the Colour models are only really 150 dpi. The claimed 300 dpi is poorer than mono eink because each pixel has a permanent red, green or blue printed dot on it, but not filling it so that screen isn't too dark. But it's still a lot darker.
The colour eink is a backward step if you mostly read novels. Any matt screen phone or tablet is better than colour eink. for colour.

Thus currently the only good choices for novels on Kobo are the Clara BW 6″ and Sage 8″. There is no current mono 7″.

[buffaloseven]

Originally Posted by Quoth

But the Colour models are only really 150 dpi. The claimed 300 dpi is poorer than mono eink because each pixel has a permanent red, green or blue printed dot on it, but not filling it so that screen isn't too dark. But it's still a lot darker.
The colour eink is a backward step if you mostly read novels. Any matt screen phone or tablet is better than colour eink. for colour.

Thus currently the only good choices for novels on Kobo are the Clara BW 6″ and Sage 8″. There is no current mono 7″.

Well...kind of. From what I've seen is that you still have your 300 DPI eInk below, and you do have the dot, but it doesn't look to me (from online images) that the degradation of BW is all the way down to 150, though it's definitely not 300.

It really does seem like there's a big divide on opinions on it, so I'll have to check it out in a store with my own eyes to see if it's something that would bother me or not!

Either way, USB-C and faster processors would be very nice with the newer ones. Some things are pretty sluggish on my Aura H2O. Best move might be to just wait for the next generation, though; have to find out!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by buffaloseven

Well...kind of. From what I've seen is that you still have your 300 DPI eInk below, and you do have the dot, but it doesn't look to me (from online images) that the degradation of BW is all the way down to 150, though it's definitely not 300.

Exactly, it's somewhere in between, and some mono content at 300 dpi will have coloured artefacts, so the "rainbow" setting might treat mono as 150 dpi, which removes artefacts.

A 1920 x 1080 basic HD LCD is still "mono" below and is 5760 x 1080, or 1920 x 3240, or 3840 x 2160 depending on if it has 1/3rd width pixels, 1/3rd height pixels (both stripe CFA) or square pixels (like eink) with a 2 x 2 CFA. There are also more complex LCD and OLED. But the CFA completely covers the LCD pixels and no-one tries to market LCD, OLED, QLED, LED, Plasma or CRT at the real subpixel resolution, though Cleartype and similar can get extra text sharpness by using R G B sub-pixels (one edge uses red and the other uses blue) but only on stripe filters (like Triton, but Triton is far too dark and eink didn't have rectangular pixels).

I'm glad you realise that for mono text the colour eink can't equal current mono eink quality.

There also seems to be a noticeable "screen door" effect visible depending on eyesight and glasses with Kaleido 3. Some poorer LCD panels have it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen-door_effect

Subpixel RGB (There is different kind of sub pixel add
ressing)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering

The Kaleido can't use subpixels the same way as on LCD / OLED / Plasma. CRTs can't use it because the controller doesn't know where they are.

So Kaleido only partially covers each pixel with ink in the Bayer related 2 x 2 pattern so that ignoring the colour pixel addressing of 150 dpi gives a degraded 300 dpi with coloured artefacts.

Also 2 x 2 colour addressing needs a more complex controller. Most colour panels use stripe filters and slightly smaller than 1/3 rd width (or height) pixels per visual pixel, because then it can be driven as three mono panels, each r, g or b. The more complex pixel layouts (mostly perfectly square, circular or hexagonal rather than rectangles) need custom controllers to map the colours to pixels. I suspect the reason Kaleido was years later than Triton or even ACeP was the adapting of the design of the controllers for non-stripe Bayer style 2 x 2 layouts. In pseudo 300 dpi mono mode it's just driven like a 300 dpi mono ink and in "anti-rainbow" mode driven like a 150 dpi panel, but the controller paralleling the 2 x 2 (=four pixels) layout.