Hands-On with the Kobo Arc HD

Good e-Reader is live at the Kobo launch event today, in which the company is expanding their tablet line with the unveiling of the Kobo Arc 7 HD. This new device brings next generation screen technology, and packages it unlike any other device on the market. The core focus is, of course, the e-Reading experience, which refines book discovery. Hardware The Kobo Arc HD features a seven inch capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels. It currently has over 323 PPI and will play back videos in pure 1080p. This is quite an upgrade in screen technology over the original Arc, which only had 1280 x 800 HD resolution and 215 PPI. Underneath the hood is an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor that is running a very solid 1.7 GHZ. There is also 1 GB of RAM and 16/32 GB variants for storage space. There is no expandable storage with this model, so make sure you buy the one that suits your needs. One thing Kobo has added to the Arc HD is the inclusion of a Micro HDMI port. This will allow you to hook it up to your television or projector. This is very useful, as not many e-reading focused tablets even bother with HDMI. Other ports include Micro USB, 3.5 mm headphone jack, front facing 1.3 MP camera and a rear facing speaker. The speaker is actually positioned right at the top of the device, and looks to be creeping to the top of bezel. The hardware feels very slick and polished and is a tremendous upgrade from the original Kobo Arc in every way. The HD moniker is very relevant and it destroys the current Kindle Fire HD 7 that has an aging 1280×800 resolution. Software The Kobo Arc 7 HD is running on the Google Android operating system and is running version 4.2.2. This brings it very up to date in terms of it being a current and relevant device. It also is officially Google Certified, which means you will have all of the normal Google apps loaded on it, such as Maps, Gmail, Google+, and much more. Kobo has revamped their UI and is more solid and intuitive than ever before. We will go hands on with the entire UI at the Kobo event and will update this post with our exact thoughts. What we do know from the press images is that tapestries seem to have gone away and there is a different UI. Kobo Pulse remains front and center, which gives a chatting area within eBooks for people to rate and review them. Pulse is a fairly cool innovation that has been around for quite a while. You can see how many people have read or are in the process of reading the same book as you. There are options to turn off spoilers, so you won't see comments from people who are further ahead in the book than you are. The entire UI is bright and colorful and makes it easy to interact with on a large touchscreen device. Reading Experience Kobo has also unveiled a new digital magazine section that should go live in the next few weeks. This expands on their previous newspaper offerings and they seemed to have signed some deals with major publishers. This rounds out their portfolio of 3.4 million eBooks, newspapers, and now, magazines. They have created a new way to view eBooks by having them take up a fair amount of screen real estate. You have large cover art images that are all positioned in various sizes, depending on what you accessed recently. Readers can organize and create their own collections, which are very handy on a tablet geared towards reading. They have really revised the way users can organize them while maintaining the spirit of a home library shelf, with the books stacked side by side. On the spine of the book is the book currently being read on that specific shelf, as well as the name of the collection. Wrap Up We are live at the Kobo event right now, and will be doing comprehensive hands on with video and photos. I will revise this post as we get more data and get a sense on the new software elements, what publishers have signed on with magazines and interviews with the development team. The exact pricing is $199.99 16GB/$249.99 32GB (US & Canada), €199.99 16GB/€249.99 32GB (EU), £159.99 16GB/£189.99 32GB (UK), $279.95 16GB/$329.95 32GB (Australia), $349.00 16GB/$399.00 32GB (New Zealand) Hands-On with the Kobo Arc HD is a post from: E-Reader News

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