Extensive Analysis of Kobo Vox: In-Depth User Experience Insights
Kick back and dive into the world of Kobo with their brand new gadget, the Vox Tablet! This bad boy drops on Friday, available at Chapters/Indigo locations and their website, priced competitively at $199. We were lucky enough to get our mitts on one early for a hands-on review!
The Hardware
The Vox boasts a 7-inch capacitive multi-touch screen with vivid colors and a sharp 1025x600 resolution. The user interface is optimized for this screen, with many apps, books, and menus adapting to both Landscape and Portrait orientations. The main screen, however, remains locked in Landscape mode.
Packing 8GB of internal memory, you've got plenty of space for your videos, audiobooks, and books. You can even expand the storage up to 32GB via MicroSD card. Kudos to Kobo for the versatility, but it'd have been sweet if they'd included a bit of protection from dust, especially considering this device often joins users on holiday adventures!
Powered by an 800 MHz CPU processor and 512 MB of RAM, the Vox moves like a boss. Navigating menus is a breeze, and apps load quickly. However, more graphic-intensive books like comics or PDF files might take a while to load up, but once they're ready, page turns are lightning fast.
As for the form factor, the Vox feels slick in your hands, giving off a similar vibe to the original Samsung Galaxy Tab from 2010 - a device we loved! Its quick transition between landscapes and the snappy hardware make menus load quickly.
On the top of the unit, you'll find a single mono speaker on the right side that produces decent audio quality when cranked up. There's also a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom for private listening sessions. The single press-down power button without the slider variant you usually find on e-readers and tablets is located on the top.
The volume adjustment button sits on the right side, while the left side houses the MicroSD slot and USB port for charging and data connection.
The front panel features standard home touch panels for Android functionality, including Back, Settings, and Home options. This physical interface comes in handy when software issues arise, as it allows for quick reboots.
The rear of the Vox is clean and simple, featuring Kobo's traditional quilted design. Unlike its e-ink predecessors, the Vox's quilted texture seems more polished, avoiding the cheap appearance.
The Software
Running on Android 2.3, the Vox offers a user interface similar to many other Android devices, making it user-friendly for Android enthusiasts.
Kobo provides some unique programs with the Vox. One standout is "Kobo Pulse," a social media tool that shows you how popular a book is in real-time. This dynamic feature is unlike anything you find in traditional e-readers or tablets, making the Vox truly unique in the market.
Excited to give it a whirl? Simply purchase a book, and you'll see a small pulse at the bottom of the page. The size of the pulse indicates the number of copies sold. You can shut off the feature if you prefer, but we can't imagine why you'd want to!
Once you open the pulse, you're greeted with a solid one-page social media screen. Here, you'll find statistics like the number of times the book has been read, user comments, likes, dislikes, and the number of people currently reading the book. It's an excellent way to gauge a book's popularity and the active online community around it.
The profile pictures featured are your avatar from Facebook or Twitter, requiring you to connect one of these services through the app to participate in discussions. Commenting is a Youtube-esque experience, allowing you to write brief text and vote on replies, ensuring the best comments rank at the top.
Kobo mentioned they're relying on users to self-moderate, keeping the official moderation team small. They've also emphasized their commitment to ensuring privacy concerns are addressed, offering options to opt out of personal profile exposure.
Kobo Pulse is a game-changer, elevating the Vox as the best example of social media integration in any e-reader or tablet. Other devices limit sharing to specific quotes or status updates, but the Vox allows you to interact with others in real time, chatting about the book, its characters, or whatever strikes your fancy. It brings the lively Youtube commenting experience and integrates it with reading.
Kobo has plans to roll out Pulse across their entire product line, including the Kobo Touch and Wi-Fi. They're also updating their apps for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and other platforms to make Pulse compatible across devices. The feature has been in development for six months and is a significant focus for the company.
Another Kobo staple, Reading Life, is integrated into their apps and the Touch Reader. This program tracks your reading statistics, such as the time it takes to read a book, the number of books you've read total, and award-like achievements. It's a fun way to monitor your reading progress and keep things competitive!
The main home screen is a compilation of the last four books you've read, with quick links to Reading Life, Pulse, the store, and your library.
Your library features a standard bookshelf, listing all purchased books and bookmarks for the ones you're currently reading. When you exit a book, you can pick up right where you left off. The ability to organize collections and load in your own books using the MicroSD cable is another useful feature. The device natively reads EPUB files, but you can load any format you want using the 10,000 applications available via Getjar.
Downloading apps is straightforward using Getjar. Kobo has filtered out bad apps or ones that don't work well on a seven-inch screen, organizing them more intuitively. The CEO mentioned the importance of maintaining an open ecosystem, allowing users to sideload their own applications or use alternative markets. There are no restrictions on what you can load onto the device.
The Content
The Vox comes with a revamped bookstore offering cookbooks, kids' books, graphic novels, and comic books. Parents worldwide will appreciate the "read to me" feature, which narrates the book to your kid. You can turn this off if you prefer or get tired of it quickly.
We tested a few books, and they supported full pinching and zooming on all kids' books. Colors were especially vibrant on the high-resolution screen, and the books looked great in both Portrait and Landscape modes. Some books took a while to initially load, but once loaded, page turn speed was rapid, with no lag when zooming in or out.
Similarly, comic and graphic novels were available, with elements from popular Android Comic Book readers. Graphic novels could be double-tapped to zoom into specific panels, and there were options to set panel scrolling timers to avoid needing to touch the screen after the set time had passed. The selection for comics and kids' books is growing, with Kobo promising an increase in the coming weeks.
As always, you have full access to the 2.3 million books available under the Kobo ecosystem. Popular bestsellers can be found on the front page, along with lists of currently popular books. Of course, the new Steve Jobs book was the big selling point already.
The reading experience is top-notch, with Kobo's dedication to utilizing the full-color screen for new content that wasn't previously offered. The Vox feels like a footstep in the direction of the Nook Color, offering more options and fostering the love of reading in kids. We can see the Vox becoming extremely popular with parents keen on developing their little ones' reading habits. Since Kobo's international line of e-readers is strong, we think the Vox has more reach with its kids' line of books than the Nook Color does. We're hopeful this will appeal to more publishers and independent authors to submit content.There's still no word on how authors can submit their content directly to Kobo to be included in the new sections of the store.
Some Additional Goodies
The Vox comes with some third-party applications installed by default, such as Zinio, Rdio, and newspapers from Pressreader. Many other Android tablets come with some or all of these programs, but the Kobo Vox provides content right away.Zinio is offering 12 totally free, full-featured magazines to get you started with their stable of magazines. We found the magazines to be more refined on the Kobo Vox compared to our experiences with the same apps on other devices.
The internet experience on the Vox is average, depending on your local wireless connection. Pages loaded reasonably quickly, and we were able to watch embedded Youtube videos and Flash content. There weren't many settings available with the default web browser other than bookmarking.
In the end, the Vox feels like a standard Android 2.3 tablet on the software side, offering the benefits of easy OS updates and the ability to install your own applications. However, it's Kobo's custom applications that truly shine, with the Kobo Pulse and Reading Life features standing out. The home screen is unique and well-laid out, offering options for widgets and live wallpapers. Internet is fast and robust, making multimedia content a pleasure to watch.
Our Take
The Kobo Vox is one of our favorite devices of the year, and for good reason. Kobo is setting itself apart by expanding internationally and focusing on social media. As Canadians (or Australians), we often feel overlooked by companies, so it's refreshing to see Kobo investing in markets typically neglected by others.
Kobo offers a social media experience that other e-readers can't match. All you need is their official app in most cases to take advantage of it, and they don't require you to buy their dedicated reader to participate. Reading Life is another favorite feature and is found on Samsung's entire line of tablets and smartphones.
What's next for Kobo? They've got some exciting features in the works, such as audio narration in books. If you pause the audio while reading and then open the book on your device, it will automatically sync to where you left off. They have a ton of content partners lined up, but we can't reveal any details just yet. The future looks bright for Kobo and their innovative approaches to e-reading!
Rating: 8/10
Update: Oct 28 2011 - If you own a Vox, don't miss our list of essential apps you'll want to have on your tablet! We've included Adobe Flash, Kindle Reader, Nook Reader, and other app stores. Check it out HERE.
Update 2: Many people have been curious about the new screen Kobo is using on the Vox. It's an AFFS display, which is being marketed as anti-glare! We weren't able to test the screen in direct light while in Toronto, which was rainy at the time, but from what we could see, the screen's pop and resolution are tremendous. Even with overhead light, there was minimal to no glare at all!
- The Vox Tablet, one of the latest gadgets from Kobo, boasts a 7-inch touchscreen with E-Ink technology, offering an anti-glare advantage for comfortable reading in various lighting conditions.
- To enhance your reading experience on the Vox Tablet, you can utilize a variety of apps, and some of these educational apps, such as Kobo Pulse, will provide interactive features like real-time book popularity data, making the device a unique combination of e-reader and touchscreen technology.
