The Kobo Libra Color and Clara Color are great color e-readers that can be held closed

The problem with most e-readers is that they aren’t really meant for reading books. They are meant to sell you books. Amazon, which has the largest market share in the US, is particularly notable for this, but Barnes & Noble is guilty of the same. Kobo is probably the least offensive in this regard – it has Pocket and Overdrive integration! But every so often, when I found myself totally in love with Kobo’s gorgeous new-color e-readers, I was suddenly struck with the reminder: this thing is here to sell me books.

That’s a shame because Kobo’s new Libra and Clara Color are the closest to a perfect e-reader in recent memory. Both the Libra Color $219.99 and the Clara Color $149.99 are extremely lightweight, but with a consistency that makes them feel comfortable rather than flimsy. Both include Kaleido 3 displays, meaning book covers are rendered in actual colors. Both pages scroll and navigate stores much faster than the $249.99 Boox Page (Palma’s bigger, slower sibling)—impressive, given that the Kaleido 3’s display is slightly slower than a more traditional monochromatic E Ink screen found on the Page.

I liked the more expensive Book because I prefer asymmetrical e-readers with dedicated buttons to ones that function more like traditional tablets. The fact that it also has stylus support for taking notes is a plus. Still, each one is a charming and enjoyable e-reader to use, and over the past couple of months, I’ve constantly found myself reaching for the Libra over the Boox — which, until now, has been my e-reader. main. I just like the feeling of reading it more. Sure, the Boox gives me every reading app available (it’s an E Ink Android tablet), but the Libra has none of the weird little hiccups typical of Android on E Ink.

Both Kobo eReaders also support color text highlighting, and their touchscreens feel much slicker and more responsive than the Boox page. However, those bold colors are not particularly vibrant. The Kaleido 3 display found on both gives you color, but the color is similar to what you see on a newspaper left out in the sun for a few days. Plus, this color comes at the cost of both making the black and white reading experience a little less crisp. It’s still infinitely better than previous color E Ink technologies, which often gave the entire screen a green tint.

My real issue with these devices isn’t the color screens. It’s the jam.

Kobo’s e-readers feel built more for buying books than reading them. They are affiliated with the Kobo bookstore, which is powered by Rakuten, a Japanese retailer that is often referred to as the “Japanese Amazon” or “Japanese Barnes & Noble” when people want to quickly summarize the company. Rakuten is very good at moving books, and Kobo’s built-in bookstore is similar. It doesn’t have the same library as Amazon; Amazon has more self-published books and carries more niche content from boutique publishers. However, Kobo’s library has a good spread. If it’s a remotely popular book, you’ll find it on Kobo.

Unlike other non-Android e-readers, Kobo e-readers also have a more traditional library built through Overdrive. If you have a library card from a library that works with Overdrive, you can borrow e-books. Unfortunately, that’s when you start to run into Kobo’s bookseller business butting heads with its e-reader business. To borrow books, you either have to use your phone to find them in an app like Libby, or you have to use the Discover tab, then select the Overdrive tab, and hopefully you can browse for the book you want. Or you have to search for the book in the Kobo store, and when you find the book, you have to tap the More Options button next to the much larger Buy Now and Wishlist buttons, and then tap the Borrow From Overdrive button to see if the book can be borrowed from your library. It’s miserable, and when I asked a generally very smart friend to try to borrow a book, she couldn’t even figure out how.

You also can’t have more than one library card active on Kobo at a time. Instead, when you finish a book and want to read another one that’s linked to a different library card, you have to sign out and sign in with the other card. I had to repeatedly switch between the New York Public Library and the Jersey City Public Library cards and became very frustrated. I don’t have to do this when using the Libby app on my site or iPad.

You run into the same problem using the built-in “experimental” web browser that Kobo has. I can navigate websites just fine, and if I want to try and read a book online, I can theoretically do that. No app needed. Only the browser is very underdeveloped. It would be nice if I could scroll or page using Libra’s built-in buttons like I can with the EinkBro browser on Android e-readers.

Getting e-books from other stores on the device is also a hassle. You have to connect the e-reader to your computer and drag and drop files (although Calibre, the e-book management app, makes it easier). But this problem is not unique to Kobo. Amazon and Barnes & Noble also insist that you upload books. But after years of the Boox ecosystem (and the iPad), it feels strange that all these systems insist you stay so close to their libraries. It’s a degree of closure that seems absurd, and with Kobo’s ecosystem, it feels even more absurd because in many other respects it really feels like the company is trying to do e-readers right.

The Color Kobo Books and Color Koko Clara are fast and just about perfect for getting out of the way when you just want to read a book. Their color screens aren’t quite as sharp as the iPad Mini’s LED — or even a monochrome E Ink display — but color adds a welcome flavor to the experience that black and white can’t. The fact that they even offer things like a web browser and support for Overdrive and Pocket is very welcome when compared to what Amazon is doing. But the jam, man. Locking may be the norm in the e-reader world, but it doesn’t have to be.