There's not much going on in the ereader space, but there's one company that keeps churning out devices alongside Amazon and it's called Kobo.

Well, actually, the manufacturer is Rakuten, a name which you may know for the movie and TV streaming service, but the brand is called Kobo and it offers a range of ereader products.

Its latest top-end ereader is called the Kobo Forma and with a similar feature set and price to the Amazon Kindle Oasis (2017) it has a lot to do to impress us, considering the Oasis provides one of the best reading experiences you can have.

Kobo Forma price and release date

You can buy the Kobo Forma now from the official Rakuten website as well as a selection of other retailers in the UK and Australia. As of February 2023, the Kobo Forma is no longer available in the US from Rakuten.

The starting price is set at $279.99 / £239.99 / AU$429.95, which we think is pretty steep considering you can get an all-metal Amazon Kindle Oasis starting at $249.99 / £229.99 / AU$389, and it's often on sale for less too.

Design and display

The Kobo Forma features an 8-inch display with 300 pixels per inch. It's a similar size to your average paperback book, with brilliant clarity making it a joy to read on.

If you’re looking for a smaller display, you’ll want the Kobo Clara HD, which features a 6-inch one.

The Kobo Forma is light enough to hold in one hand, with a perforated effect on the rear of it to help you grip. One edge of the ereader is slightly bent, which makes it feel a bit odd to hold at first.

Much like with the strange design of the Amazon Kindle Oasis, it’s something we got used to relatively quickly. 

By the end of our book, we knew exactly how to grasp the ereader in our hand. That said, it’s not the most attractive device to be holding and it doesn’t have the same premium feel as the Kindle Oasis.

It feels more in line with the newest Kindle Paperwhite, which is a product that’s a fair bit cheaper.

On the edge where you’ll grasp the device you’ll find two large buttons for cycling through pages, which we found easier to use than the touchscreen. The touchscreen itself was as speedy as you’d expect from an ereader and responsive enough, but we just find the buttons a touch easier than swiping the display.

The display here is E Ink, so everything you read will be in black and white but the picture is clear enough for the average book. It may just be less ideal for those who want to read graphic novels or comics.

It's worth noting that the Kobo Forma is also waterproof, so you can read this in the bath or at a beach without worrying about damaging it from a splash of water.

Reading experience

The Kobo Forma may not have an all-metal design, but it's comfortable to hold when you're reading and you'll find the display clear enough to read a variety of books comfortably.

The buttons on the bezel of the device make it easy to flick through pages quickly. The ereader will also automatically adjust to suit landscape or portrait orientation.

You may sometimes have to rotate it a few times, but it kicks in eventually. You can turn that feature off if you find it irritating too.

The brightness is easy enough to change with a couple of presses on the device's screen, and it's particularly bright when you hit the 100% mark.

One of our favorite features is a natural light idea that makes it easier on your eye by taking away the blue light that can keep your brain up at night. You can have this mode on automatically for dark reading locations or you can turn it on manually.

Alternatively, you can choose a particular time for this feature to come on instead.

Store and interface

The Kobo interface is easy to understand as soon as you pull it out of the box. If you’ve owned any ereader before (and probably if not, too) you’ll find navigating around the different menus easy enough on the touchscreen.

There are lots of accessibility features brought to the fore from Kobo, but they’re not as extensive as we’ve seen on some of the most recent Kindle products such as the Kindle Paperwhite (2018).

You likely won’t be let down by the interface on the Kobo Forma though as it just works and does exactly what you’ll want it to when you need it.

The store is where the platform can be a little let down, and that’s because it’s a bit more limited than Amazon’s. 

Kobo is getting better at stocking all the latest books, but there are some notable omissions from the ereader’s range in 2018.

Before buying the Kobo Forma, we’d recommend visiting the Kobo ebook store and entering a few titles that you’d expect to be able to read on your ereader in the genres you really like. It’s a useful test to make sure the Kobo ebook store will suit your reading needs.

If you can't find some of your favorite titles on the store, you can always upload your own files to the Kobo Forma or you can connect it to a service called OverDrive that works with public libraries in the US, UK and Australia.

You'll have to check with your local library to see if it supports the service, but it's an interesting way to get ebooks onto your Kobo.

Be warned, there's also only an 8GB storage version of this ereader, so if you think you're going to have thousands and thousands of ebooks you may want to opt for a larger alternative, such as the 32GB Amazon Kindle Oasis (2017).

Battery life

Battery life is a difficult thing to test on an ereader considering how long these last from a single charge, but our time charging up the Kobo Forma only took around two hours using a micro USB cable into the port at the bottom of the device.

We spent around five hours reading a book on the device, and we’ve had it on and off in our bag in standby mode for around three weeks. That left us with 46% charge left on the ereader, so that’s enough to at least read another short novel.

Kobo estimates you’ll get six weeks of battery out of the Forma depending on use, and that’s exactly what we’d expect from a device like this in 2018.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that we often had the ereader on the lower brightness settings, so while you may not have to use the maximum brightness all that much, turning it up may mean the battery life sinks quicker than what we’ve seen above.

Verdict

The truth is the Kobo Forma doesn’t do all that much new that's likely to make you want to drop your current ereader and upgrade to this one.

If you own an older Kobo from around five years ago or a Kindle from around the same period you will find this a significant upgrade, but anyone who has kept up to date with ereader products is unlikely to find much reason to grab this.

That doesn’t make the Kobo Forma bad though, it’s just a little uninspiring.

Who’s this for?

If you need a new ereader and you want something with a larger display, water resistance or decent battery life, the Kobo Forma will suit you.

Those who’ve owned Kobo ereaders in the past will likely want to stay with the company to ensure they can bring across all of their existing ebooks and data from previous ereaders.

This is also a sturdy alternative to the Amazon Kindle range that is such a behemoth in the realm of ereaders. If you want something that little bit different to Amazon's offerings then the Kobo Forma will make for a capable option.

Should you buy it?

The Kobo Forma comes with a high price, but if you’re after a new ereader that offers a fantastic reading experience then the Forma could still be a strong choice.

Be warned that the ebook store is a little less appetizing than Amazon’s alternative, but the selection combined with the ability to upload ebook files from some other sources should make most people happy in that respect.

First reviewed: November 2018