Comment by finalarbiter
10 days ago
I agree with your sentiment that the Kobo is better than the Kindle from an... ethical standpoint, if you have the money for one. However, it is worth noting that Kindles will always be cheaper than Kobo devices [0] due to economies of scale and lockscreen advertisements (removable with jailbreaking). From a pure cost perspective, and assuming the user is technically-minded enough to accomplish the jailbreak, the Kindle is likely always [1] a better deal.
[0] as of today, 12/8/25, the "base model" Kindle 11th Generation is priced at $109.99 USD, and the respective Kobo Clara BW is $139.99 USD.
[1] I say "likely always" to cover my bases. To my knowledge Calibre supports Kindle, just not as well as Kobo. That said I have found that the KOreader app is more than powerful enough for my use case (reading my own epubs, using dictionaries, etc.)
That doesn't always hold, if you want color e-ink then Kobo is currently the cheaper option.
Kindle Colorsoft (7" 16GB) - $250
Kindle Colorsoft (7" 32GB) - $280
Kobo Clara Color (6" 16GB) - $160
Kobo Libra Color (7" 32GB) - $230
The Libra also supports a stylus (sold separately) while the Colorsoft doesn't, that's reserved for the much bigger and pricier Kindle Scribe.
How is situation with latency on these readers?
I’ve just acquired the latest gen Kindle and I’m absolutely blown away by how fast it is.
do you mean latency on a color screen? (my experience with color eInk is that it adds quite a lot of latency)
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Plus the kindles will get decent discounts on prime day, black friday and such.
Where do I get DRM-free ebooks to put on a Kobo? I don't support breaking DRM. So I'm using a Kindle because it has the best access to and integration with almost any book I want.
What does it mean to not support breaking DRM? You purchase something and then are fine not being able to use it?
Not OP, but maybe also against buying stuff with DRM in the first place?