Kobo Clara BW
The Kobo Clara BW is all the e-reader you need with all the features you want, bar colour E Ink. However, in this relatively early stage of colour E Ink going mainstream, there’s still a good argument for sticking with just the most mature of e-reader features. That is just what the Kobo Clara BW provides.
Pros
- It’s water resistance
- Wide array of features
- Top-tier E Ink screen
- Coat pocket friendly
Cons
- The screen will seem small to some
- Colour E Ink available for a little more £
Key Features
- 6in E Ink Carta 1300 screenA Carta 1300 E Ink display promises better contrast than older generations of ereader, but it’s a relatively small panel.
- Variable colour temperatureYou can choose how cool (blue) or warm (orange) you want the screen light to appear, and can schedule a night-time shift.
- IPX8 water resistancePrimed for bath time, the Clara BW has IPX8 water resistance, matching the best models.
Introduction
The Kobo Clara BW may be the most sensible buy among the current crop of e-readers. It is not the cheapest, but provides the best spread of features among its entry-level peers, for many shoppers.
These include water resistance and an E Ink Carta 1300 screen. Unlike the Kindle 2024, the Kobo Clara BW also has baked-in support for library book lending, through Overdrive. While the Kindle is a touch cheaper at its standard price, the Clara BW has several of the upgrades found in the more expensive Kindle Paperwhite, minus the full-flat display design and larger screen.
That last part is one of the key reasons not to buy a Clara BW. 6-inch e-readers are great for sticking in a coat pocket, but sometimes that extra space just feels better on the eyes. And colour E Ink, missing in the Clara BW?
While Kobo makes a colour e-reader for just a little more money, the Clara Colour and the Libra Colour, a page of text will actually look slightly better on the Clara BW thanks to the current state of colour versus monochrome E Ink. It’s one to consider, but isn’t better in every respect.
Design
- It’s among the smaller e-readers
- Excellent water resistance
- Debossed rear texture for extra grip
The Clara BW is one of Kobo’s more practical, less flashy readers. That means a raised plastic screen border rather than a flat, flush display surface.
It’s also a 6-inch screen reader. These are small enough to fit in a coat pocket if you don’t use a bulky case.
By the standards of phones, the Kobo Clara BW does not feel all that dense or expensive. Low weight matters more in a device you are likely to end up holding one-handed, though, potentially for hours at a time.
Unlike the soft finish of Amazon’s Kindle range, the Clara BW has a contoured texture on the back for extra grip.
It also has excellent IPX8 water resistance, matching the more expensive Kindle Paperwhite. This level of water resistance testing doesn’t account for high temperatures or the use of bath bombs and bubble bath. But it’s clearly intended for the job. “Bring your books to the bath or the beach,” reads the Kobo website.
I’d recommend getting a case, particularly if you are going to take the Kobo Clara BW anywhere near sand. While E Ink screens are famously hardy, they still have plastic top layers that can easily be scratched. They just don’t tend to self-destruct on impact like LCDs will often do.
It’s perhaps marginally less scratch-prone than some of the best e-readers, thanks to the millimetre or so of raised border. Ereaders deserve reasonably kind treatment, though, as they can last absolutely ages with a more careful touch.
Screen
- Great screen sharpness
- Adjustable screen colour temperature
The Kobo Clara BW screen is a real highlight. It lacks just two things of the most expensive e-readers: large size and colour E Ink.
This is a 6-inch Carta 1300 E Ink panel, one of a high enough resolution that even getting your eyeball up to the surface doesn’t make the microcapsules that make up E Ink apparent. It’s a 1448 x 1072 resolution panel, not that it’s worth getting worked up about pixel counts in the same way as you might with a phone or tablet.
Kobo’s use of up-to-date Carta 1300 tech also helps with fast page turns and limited ghosting if you choose to make the panel refresh only every 10 pages or every chapter — there are controls for this in the Settings menu.
Some like to get worked up about the contrast of various generations of E Ink. Having switched between more than 10 e-readers over the last month and change, I don’t think it’s worth thinking about too much.
While Carta 1300 is meant to have improved contrast, with deeper blacks, it’s all so reliant on context. For example, the Clara BW’s blacks in the Dark mode are perceptually improved by the use of dark grey, rather than pure black casing plastic.
The appearance of the blank and black spaces are also steered by the front light setting. Raw E Ink contrast matters most if you’ll sometimes use the e-reader with the screen light totally off, something I never do these days. I do think it’s worth noting the “white” of a Clara BW is going to be much less grey/dark than that of a Clara Colour.
Kobo gives the Clara BW an advantage over the basic Kindle here too. The screen light has variable colour temperature, the idea being you can reduce the blue light content at night, to try to avoid it affecting your sleep.
Much like a Kindle Paperwhite, the Clara BW has a schedule function, letting you set the time at which it takes a turn for the orange. I haven’t found the need to use this schedule, and have been falling asleep reading readers for years. But the temperature control is still great in the way it lets you choose the base tone. Heading at least a little towards the warmer end lets you make the E Ink panel more like that of a paperback.
There are two other missing parts, other than the colour E Ink or extra-large size already mentioned. Some e-readers have auto brightness, but here you have to alter the level manually. There’s also no support for Kobo’s note-taking stylus, which ships with the Elipsa 2E and can be used with the Libra series.
You can doodle in the Sketch Pad mini app, built-in, but it is extremely basic and, in my opinion, not worth using.
Features
- Supports Overdrive ebook rentals
- Optional Kobo Plus subscription
- Regular book discounts, if not quite at Kindle’s level
The Kobo Clara BW arguably beats its nearest Kindle rival for hardware, but software? That’s a bit more tricky.
As a day-to-day Kindle user, I find there are more bargains to be found on the Kindle Store. Sure, Kobo has sales and a Daily Deal, but I have worked up quite a to-read pile just by browsing Amazon’s store on a Kindle. There’s loads of stuff on sale at any one point, and I find it easier to browse than on Kobo.
The Kobo Clara BW strikes back with some very important advantages. My personal favourite, the software has integrated support for Overdrive, a system used by lots of libraries for ebook and audiobook rentals.
Such books can be rented directly through the Clara BW’s interface, which is great. Some titles, including graphic novels, can only be transferred over with the help of Adobe Digital Editions DRM software. That’s a pain, but the Clara BW is far from the best way to take in graphic novels anyway. Too small, too monochrome.
And while the Clara BW supports audiobooks, streamed to wireless headphones or a Bluetooth speaker, these can’t be rented from Overdrive.
Native file support for ebooks is good, though. EPUB, Mobi and PDF are among the 15 supported formats. You can simply drag and drop files to the 16GB internal storage when connected to a PC or Mac. A little over 12GB of that space is free to use.
Kobo Plus sits at the other end of the spectrum to an on-PC digital library. This is a subscription that provides unlimited access to a library of ebooks and audiobooks. But it’s not the entire Kobo library — according to the company it’s home to more than 1.5 million books, more than 100,000 audiobooks.
It’s £8.99 a month, or £11.99 with audiobooks included too. It’s going to be frustrating if Plus doesn’t have what you want — just as with Kindle Unlimited.
There are plenty of routes to content with a Kobo Clara BW. One you may not have considered is its Pocket integration. This is a platform that lets you save articles, usually on your phone, to read later.
Now you can save them on your phone, and read them later on your e-reader. You just need some Wi-Fi access to sync.
More important, the Kobo Clara BW offers great control over font size, letting you see a live preview as you use the pinch gesture to alter it (there are other methods too should this seem fiddly). There are 13 fonts, lots of additional page layout customisations, and you can even side load additional fonts.
Kobo says the Clara BW can last an unusually specific 53 days between charges. This relates to more careful use than most people will indulge in, mind — just 10% screen brightness and the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios switched off, with 30 minutes of reading time a day.
However, with real-world use the perception is still it lasts forever between top-ups. I’ve read a couple of books on it already on just a portion of a single charge. And the 1500mAh battery capacity is also significantly higher than that of a 2024 Kindle, estimated to be somewhere in the region of 1040-1100mAh.
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Should you buy it?
Buy if you want all the features for less money
The Clara BW has all the key features the basic Kindle lacks, including colour temperature control, next-gen E Ink tech and water resistance. This makes it one of the best buys in terms of price versus techy substance.
Don’t buy if you want a large or colour ereader
This is a 6-inch e-reader, and some of you may prefer a more spacious 7-inch model like the Kobo Libra or Kindle Paperwhite. It’s not colour either, as the name suggests, although the benefits are limited in these smaller e-readers.
Final Thoughts
The Kobo Clara BW is not the best e-reader or the most exciting in the Kobo line-up, but it is one of the most practical. It’s Kobo’s cheapest model and yet still has more advanced features like variable colour temperature and water resistance.
These justify the extra you pay over the Kindle 2024, and built-in library ebook rentals can help you claw back those costs.
Should you pay extra for a colour E Ink in the Kobo Libra Colour? It’s certainly tempting, but consider the limited colour depth of current E Ink panels, and how they have worse native contrast than the Clara BW’s Carta 1300 screen.
How we test
I’ve reviewed all the major Kindles and Kobo models launched in the past decade, and have used every single generation. I’ve tested this Kobo Clara BW for the past two weeks, reading multiple books and testing the updated light in various environments.
Read three books
Tested in various environments
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FAQs
Yes, although the ereader use the base platform, Overdrive, rather than the Libby app.
It has excellent IPX8 water resistance.
It can play audiobooks with the help of a Bluetooth speaker or headphones, but has no speaker of its own.
Full specs
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