Two-minute review

The third-generation Oura ring might look like its predecessor, but inside there are some big upgrades that make it even better at tracking – and improving – your daily habits.

First, a little background: Oura is a smart ring, an emerging category but one Oura is top of. For now, at least. It's lined with sensors, which measure biometric data 24 hours a day, and uses it to help you strike the right balance of rest and activity. The fact that it’s a ring means you have to rely on its well-designed smartphone app when you want to check your stats, but also means that heart rate data is more accurate, as the blood vessels in your fingers are much closer to the surface than those in your wrist.

The latest Oura, released back in 2021, has a brand new optical heart rate sensor that now tracks data 24 hours a day meaning you can spot-check your pulse any time, and easily review changes over time. It also means the app has much more data to draw on when assessing your activity and recovery habits, making its guidance much more accurate and useful. It's our top choice for best sleep tracker, at least while we wait to see if the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Ring can knock it off its perch, or perhaps an unannounced Oura Ring 4.

There’s a new SpO2 sensor, as well, which also benefits from being on your finger rather than your wrist, plus seven temperature sensors to track changes in skin temperature.

The Oura app collects and analyzes all this data, but never gives you figures without context. No matter how far you drill down through the graphs and charts, there’s always a detailed explanation of how it was calculated, what it means, and what action you can take to improve your rest/activity balance. Your heart rate variability is lower than usual, which means you may be stressed – perhaps consider a relaxation session. You got to bed on time, but had less REM sleep than you should – consider cutting back on the caffeine.

Along with the latest ring, Oura has also introduced a subscription plan, which will give you access to extra tools and insights for a monthly fee. The ring comes with a six-month trial, and existing Oura users who decide to upgrade will get free lifetime membership.

Before you place your order though, you should know that some of the ring’s most interesting features have yet to launch. Automatic workout tracking, for example, isn’t yet available to Android users, and the ability to track your heart rate during exercise is scheduled to arrive in early 2022. Most of Oura’s member-only features are still in development too.

Price and release date

• Released November 2021
• Same price as second-gen Oura ring
• Optional membership subscription

The third-generation Oura was released on November 16 2021, and costs $299 (about £230 / AU$420). That’s the same as the starting price of the second-generation ring, but this time there’s no premium diamond-set version available. The ring can only be bought direct from Oura, but worldwide shipping is available.

The price of the ring includes a six-month Oura membership. Once that expires, you’ll need to pay $5.99 (about £4.50 / AU$8) per month to maintain your subscription if you want to keep access to premium features. If you’re upgrading from a second-gen Oura ring, you’ll get lifetime membership for free.

For comparison, Apple Fitness Plus costs $9.99 / £9.99 / AU$14.99 per month, and Fitbit Premium is $9.99 / £7.99 / AU$15.49. These both offer a lot more features than Oura’s membership plan, but they’re also much more established; the Oura subscription service has only just launched, and should receive lots of extra tools over the coming months and years.

Design

• Clean, simple look
• Choice of four finishes
• Updated shape

From the outside, the Oura looks like a simple metal band, but look closer and you’ll see that it’s lined with sensors that sit against your finger.

Before you order your ring, Oura will send you a set of plastic blanks so you can find the best size for your hand, and get used to how it’ll feel to wear the device during everyday activities. Oura advised us that, unlike the second-gen model, the sensors in the new ring works best when worn on a finger rather than your thumb. Thankfully, it’s smooth and comfortable, which is important for a device that you’ll be wearing all day and all night.

It comes in four colors (metallic silver, black, or gold, and a matt black finish called ‘stealth’), and is completely plain except for a small flat section that sits on top of your finger, and is reminiscent of a signet ring. This is a new feature for the third-gen ring, and gives its designers a tiny bit of extra space for its internal components. It’s no heavier than its predecessor though, and still weighs between four and six grams.

Its charger is a simple black plastic stand that connects to a USB cable, with a white LED that illuminates when the ring is connected.

Features

• Upgraded heart rate sensor
• Seven temperature sensors
• New SpO2 sensor

One of the biggest benefits of a smart ring over a watch is that the blood vessels in your fingers are closer to the skin than those in your wrist, which should result in more accurate heart rate measurements. It therefore makes sense that the biggest upgrade to the Oura 3 is a new optical heart rate sensor, which now measures your pulse 24 hours a day.

The second-gen Oura excelled at tracking your wellbeing while you sleep, but constantly measuring your heart rate during waking hours as well means that there’s much more data for the app to draw upon in order to assess your activity, wellbeing, and recovery.

The new ring also has seven skin temperature sensors, which allow it to measure changes in your baseline temperature that could be caused by exercise, stress, or your menstrual cycle to predict your period more accurately than a simple calendar. Period prediction is currently in beta for iOS users, and should be rolling out for Android in the near future.

The final addition to the ring is an SpO2 sensor, which tracks blood oxygen saturation throughout the night. Like the heart rate sensor, this benefits from being against your finger due to the closer proximity of blood vessels to the skin’s surface, so its readings should be more accurate than those from a watch.

Performance

• Long-term use gives more accurate results
• Data clearly presented and explained
• Workout tracking is a work in progress

First of all, it’s important to note that you’ll need to use the Oura ring for at least a couple of weeks in order to establish baseline habits – and the longer you use it, the more accurate and useful its reports will be.

Like its predecessors, the third-gen Oura is designed to help you strike the right balance of activity and rest, keeping moving enough to maintain and improve your fitness, while getting enough sleep and quiet time to recharge for the next day.

The ring connects to the Oura smartphone app (available for Android and iOS), and your biometric data is synced automatically throughout the day. All your stats are presented clearly in a nicely designed dashboard, and you can browse through more in-depth analysis by tapping on three categories: readiness, sleep, and activity.

Each day, you’ll be given a readiness score based on how well you’ve managed to balance activity and rest, and how much energy you have for the day ahead. This is a feature that Fitbit has recently added to its own app, though only for Fitbit Premiums subscribers, and Oura’s score takes more metrics into account.

Like most fitness trackers and smartwatches, Oura also gives you a sleep score when you wake (presented as a percentage and a semicircular chart so you can quickly check it at a glance first thing). This takes into account not just how long you spent asleep, and in which sleep stages (light, deep, and REM), but also factors including your heart rate and bedtime schedule.

Finally, the dashboard will present you with an activity goal, which you should aim to complete before the end of the day. You’ll be told how many calories you should aim to burn through activity based on your age, gender and daily readiness, and the app will estiamte roughly how long you should spend walking to achieve this. More intense activities like running or cycling will fill the activity progress bar faster.

Over the first few days and weeks, Oura will build up a picture of your activity and sleeping habits, plus baselines for your temperature and heart rate. The app can then identify and interpret any deviations from these norms.

Rather than simply presenting this as raw data, the Oura app processes it in various interesting ways that help you understand your daily habits. For example, delving into your heart rate data will allow you to see something called ‘restorative time’ – periods during the day when both your body and mind are recharging. This is calculated using not just your heart rate, but also the temperature of your hands; if your hands are relatively warm and your heart rate is low, it’s likely that you’re taking some time to relax.

In our tests, we were particularly impressed by the ring’s ability to differentiate between time spent in bed and time spent actually asleep; something many dedicated sleep trackers struggle with. We also appreciated its ability to detect naps. Many fitness trackers fail to tell the difference between a few minutes of rest during the day and a full night’s sleep, and award you a low score if you take a quick siesta in the afternoon. Oura identifies naps, prompts you to confirm them in the app, and integrates them into its analysis of your sleeping patterns. Naps will also be factored into your daily readiness score – and if you’re not sleeping well at night, you may be encouraged to avoid them later in the day.

We found that activity detection seemed to be the Oura ring’s weakest point. The new all-day heart rate tracking appeared to accurately reflect changes in exercise intensity, but we would sometimes receive notifications that we’d achieved our daily activity goal while doing something like cooking, or even brushing our hair.

Oura rolled out automatic workout detection for iOS users in February 2021, but this feature doesn’t yet seem to have reached Android. The app will detect if you’ve completed some intense activity, and will count it towards your daily goal, but if you want to get specific you’ll need to enter the workout details yourself. To do that, tap the plus icon on the main dashboard and enter the time you began, the type of activity, and the duration. The app will then calculate the calorie burn and factor the exercise into your daily metrics.

Hopefully automatic workout detection will arrive on Android before long – and it should be quite refined when it does. Each time the iOS app identifies a workout, it will prompt the user to report back on whether or not it was accurate, helping to fine-tune the algorithm.

In early 2022, Oura is also planning to introduce a feature that will allow you to track your heart rate during workouts, and get insights into your exercise after you’ve finished. We’ve few details at the time of writing, but a preview of the tool shows a map of a running route, so the tool will presumably use your phone’s GPS chip to track your location.

Member benefits

• Sleep sounds available in the app
• Lots more content on the way

The Oura app received a major upgrade to coincide with the launch of the third-generation ring, and now contains several extra tools for paid-up members. Right now these are mostly sleep and relaxation aids, but the company promises that subscribers can look forward to “an ever-growing suite of features, insights, personalized recommendations, guided audio sessions, science-based educational content, and more.”

In short, it sounds very much like a new competitor to the likes of Fitbit Premium, Apple Fitness Plus, and the recently launched Amazon Halo Fitness service.

To get a taste of things to come, tap the menu button at the top left of the Oura app, and you’ll see a list of additional options including ‘Sleep sounds’. These are guided meditation sessions and relaxing stories to help you wind down before bed, or whenever you want to chill out. The selection is quite small at the time of writing, with three meditations and three stories, but each one is very nicely presented, and can be accompanied by a soothing background sound like white noise, waves, or rainfall. It’s a strong start, and we’re looking forward to seeing what else Oura adds over the coming months for subscribers.

First reviewed December 2021

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• The best cheap fitness trackers

Lightspeed is a Canadian point of sale (POS) and e-commerce software vendor. The company was founded in 2005 to provide POS systems to online and physical retailers and has grown rapidly since its launch. In 2014, it began providing payment solutions for the hospitality industry.

Lightspeed’s operations are divided into four main divisions; Retail, eCommerce, OnSite, and Restaurant. The company currently serves over 160,000 customers and processed tens of billions of dollars worth of transactions last year. It brought in over $600 million in net revenue in the same period. 

In 2021, Lightspeed changed its formal name from Lightspeed POS, Inc to Lightspeed Commerce Inc. This name change reflected its strategic shift from point-of-sale systems to broader online and brick-and-mortar commerce tools. The company is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. 

Competitor products include AirPOS, Shopify, EposNow and Square POS.

Lightspeed POS: Plans and pricing

Lightspeed offers different pricing for its point-of-sale systems to physical retailers and restaurants. Besides, it’s unlike other systems where you pay one-time for the hardware. Lightspeed requires an ongoing monthly subscription if you want to use its POS system, and you’ll have access to the software as long as you renew your monthly subscription.

There are four plans both for retailers and restaurants:

Retailers

Lean: $89 per month. This plan gives you access to the POS software and an integrated payments processing solution.

Standard: $149 per month. Everything in the Lean plan plus software tools for accounting and setting up an online store.

Advanced: $269 per month. Everything in the Standard plan plus advanced reporting & analytics tools and loyalty plans for customers.

Enterprise: Custom pricing (contact the sales team for a quote). You can get personalized consultation services, an assigned customer support staff, and negotiate your transaction fees.

Restaurants

Essentials: $69 per month. A customizable POS system, menu manager, floor plan manager, advanced reporting, integrated payments, and several other features that make running a restaurant easier.

Plus: $189 per month. Everything in the Essentials plan plus an online ordering system, order at pay and table system, contactless payments, cloud-based monitoring, and multi-location management.

Pro: $399 per month. Everything in the Plus plan plus raw API access to customize the payments experience.

Enterprise: Custom pricing (contact sales team). A personalized hardware and software system, unlimited consultation services, and a dedicated support team.

The fee for processing payments is a separate 2.6% + 10¢ for every successful card transaction.

Lightspeed POS: Features

Hardware

Lightspeed does not have its own special hardware system, unlike many other POS vendors. You can use it with an iPad or buy POS hardware from Verifone; e285, P400, or 400m. You'll also need to buy other individual accessories such as a receipt printer, cash drawer, and barcode scanner. For convenience, Lightspeed offers a hardware kit that includes an iPad stand, kitchen printer, receipt printer, and cash drawer; you just need an existing iPad.

Using an iPad or off-the-shelf POS hardware saves significant costs, unlike many other POS providers that require you to buy or rent their specialized hardware that can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. You can even use hardware from different brands, while Lightspeed focuses on providing point-of-sale software.

Payments Processing

Lightspeed offers its own solution that enables you to receive payments from customers' cards. There’s no setup fee and the system is easy to set up. Once it’s up and running, you’re free to accept payments from all major debit and credit cards. The pricing is simple; 2.6% + 10¢ for every successful transaction.

Depending on your plan, you can get access to other tools that help you manage and report sales. For example, you can integrate the payment system with your accounting software to automatically record every sale instead of doing that manually. You can also monitor your sales reports in real time from any device (as long as you have the correct login details).

If you run a restaurant, you can set the POS system to split bills among groups and allow each individual to pay at different times. You can set the prices of items beforehand and just select the items that the customer chooses to automatically calculate the price. These extra features make Lightspeed an ideal POS solution for retailers and restaurants.

eCommerce Tools

Some pricing plans also give you access to Lightspeed’s tools for setting up an online store. You can create a professional online store, add inventory, and collect payments from customers with ease. You can even connect your website to social media platforms and other online marketplaces to get sales.

Lightspeed POS: Interface and use

Lightspeed offers a lot of good features, but one of the major complaints we observed is that the platform has a clunky interface. Truly, Lightspeed isn’t as user-friendly as many other POS software vendors, owing in part to having many features that you might find difficult to navigate. However, it’s not impossible to adapt and become used to the platform.    

Lightspeed POS: Support

Lightspeed offers customer support through email, telephone, and live chat. The company has different telephone support lines depending on the country you’re calling from. Email response is quick (under 24 hours) and so is live chat. Customers often praise Lightspeed for having stellar customer support.  

Lightspeed POS: The competition

Stripe and Clover are two popular competitors with Lightspeed’s POS system. Unlike Lightspeed, Stripe lets you purchase hardware one-time and you don’t pay any recurring subscription fees. Its transaction fees are slightly more expensive; 2.7% + 5 cents.

Clover requires a monthly subscription fee just like Lightspeed. But, you can get much lower transaction fees (2.4% + $0.10) depending on the plan you pick.

Lightspeed POS: Final verdict

Lightspeed is a good point-of-sale system that we’ll recommend to every retailer or hospitality business. It is easy to set up and makes accepting payments as easy as possible. However, beware of some slight drawbacks such as a clunky interface.    

Further reading

You may also like our articles on the best POS systems for restaurants and best POS for food trucks, or 9 inspiring ideas on how to use POS system customer data.

Shopify may need no introduction because it is the most popular e-commerce software vendor globally. The company was founded in 2006 by an entrepreneur named Tobias Lütke who struggled to build an online store for snowboarding equipment and set out to build his own e-commerce software to make it easier. Observing that the software was good, he switched his focus from building an online store to providing tools for retailers that needed to build one.

Shopify’s e-commerce software has enjoyed paralleled growth and garnered millions of customers across the globe. By 2016, the company had nearly $400 million in annual revenue, and that figure exploded to $4.6 billion by 2021 after the Covid pandemic spurred an online retail boom.

Shopify forayed into point-of-sale systems in 2017 by releasing a Bluetooth-enabled debit and credit card reader for brick-and-mortar stores. Since then, it has built more POS products and turned them into a major source of revenue. The company is based in Ottawa, Canada.

Shopify POS: Plans and pricing

Shopify offers two point-of-sale plans; Lite and Pro. Lite is included for every user who has an existing Shopify plan, while Pro costs $89 per month per location in addition to the cost of the Shopify plan. 

The three main Shopify plans you can choose from include;

Basic: $39 per month, or $29 per month billed annually. This plan gives you access to basic reports, 2 staff accounts, and up to 1,000 inventory locations.

Shopify: $105 per month, or $79 per month billed annually. This plan provides 5 staff accounts, professional reports, and up to 1,000 inventory locations.

Advanced: $399 per month, or $299 per month billed annually. This plan provides 5 staff accounts, professional reports, and up to 1,000 inventory locations. This plan includes 15 staff accounts, a custom report builder, and up to 1,000 inventory locations.

As for point-of-sale transaction fees, each plan comes with a different structure;

- Basic: 2.7% 

- Shopify: 2.5%

- Advanced: 2.4%

Note that Shopify lets you try each plan for just $1 per month for three months before paying the full price. 

To accept payments, you must buy a Shopify card reader or a full terminal known as POS Go (this cost is one-time and includes a 1-year warranty). POS Go costs $399 or $429 including a pouch for the device. The card reader costs $49 and an extra $39 if you want a dock.

Shopify POS: Features

Hardware

The POS Go is an all-in-one terminal that includes a card reader and barcode scanner. You can use the scanner to automatically detect the price of an item and the card reader to receive the money from the customer. This device accepts tap, chip, and swipe payments. It has a 5.5-inch high-definition display and a long battery life to ensure you can use it for a whole business day after a full charge.

The smaller card reader lets you accept tap and chip payments from customers but not swipe. It connects wirelessly to a tablet or via Bluetooth to a mobile phone. It is compact and easy to handle, meaning it is suitable for businesses that operate on the go, e.g., farmer's markets.

Shopify Payments

Shopify offers a payments processing solution that lets you charge money to all major debit and credit cards. Your customers can insert their cards, tap them, or swipe them depending on the type of hardware you chose. There's also Tap to Pay, which lets you accept payments on your iPhone without any additional hardware. The pricing is transparent -- between 2.4% and 2.7% on each successful transaction -- with no hidden fees or setup fees.

Inventory Management

One of the major pain points that retailers face is managing their inventory; knowing which products are available at a given time and the prices for each of them. The good thing is that Shopify provides features to help.

You can take stock of each item and assign products to different locations and channels using Shopify's software. You can also perform accurate inventory counts with your barcode scanner after receiving goods. You can set the system to alert you if an item is running out of stock or to provide sale item suggestions. Likewise, you can get detailed reports to track your sales; what products are selling faster, what products aren’t selling, which products should be restocked, etc. 

Shopify POS: Interface and use

One of Shopify’s main selling points is its intuitive and visually-appealing interface. Despite packing so many features, Shopify’s developers managed to design and build an app that’s easy to navigate. The interface is minimal, uncluttered, and looks appealing to both you and your customers. You’ll likely find it easy to set up Shopify’s point-of-sale system and use it routinely.    

Shopify's point of sale software ease of use is undoubtedly its greatest strength. 

Providing sufficient performance and user friendliness can be a difficult balancing act, but it’s one Shopify POS pulls off commendably. 

You get a free 14 day trial without having to hand over your company credit card details, so you can see just how easy it is to do business with. During the trial, you're offered a user dashboard with a friendly intro video giving you a guide to the POS platform. 

The dashboard is intuitive and allows you to handle basic tasks with locations, additional products, taxes, payments and set up systems. On the left hand column, you can view some of your key data such as orders, customers, discounts and any marketing activity. 

Shopify POS: Support

Shopify offers direct support through email, live chat, and telephone. You can contact the company’s support team at anytime and expect a quick response. There’s also an official Help Center where you can access articles and user guides on setting up and using Shopify’s POS system. Likewise, there’s an official forum to interact with other Shopify users and exchange solutions to each other’s problems. 

Shopify POS: The competition

There’s no shortage of POS systems rivaling Shopify’s. Stripe and Clover are two popular competitors. Stripe has higher transaction fees but you don’t need to pay any recurring subscription fee after buying the hardware, unlike with Shopify. Clover has much more expensive hardware than Shopify but similar transaction fees. 

Other competitors include AirPOS, EposNow and Square POS.

Shopify POS: Final verdict

Shopify’s point-of-sale system is one of the best that we’ve seen so far. You’ll hardly find another POS system that is this intuitive and offers so many features. The main drawback is that Shopify is much more expensive than the competition; you’ll first need a Shopify susbcription then an extra $89 per month per location if you want all point-of-sale features. 

We've rated the best merchant services.

Kobo Libra 2: Two-minute review

When it was announced back in October 2021, the Kobo Libra 2 didn't seem like much of an upgrade over the Libra H2O, at least on paper. However, what little changed made the ereader an absolute winner, particularly when it comes to value for money. And it remains so even after all this time and newer models having been released since.

In the time since its launch, Kobo has quietly increased the price of most of its current ereader models, but at launch the Libra 2 was almost the same price as the H2O – just $10 / £10 / AU$10 more in fact. However, the features the Libra 2 boasts still makes it worthwhile despite the price rise.

The Kobo Libra 2 uses the E Ink Carta 1200 screen that's still being used on newer models, 32GB internal storage, Bluetooth connectivity for listening to audiobooks via wireless headphones, and a USB-C charging port. That puts the Libra 2 in direct competition with Amazon’s 2021 edition of the Kindle Paperwhite, but the asymmetric design that allows you to use the Libra 2 single-handed just adds to its appeal.

Out of all those updates, the addition of audiobook support is arguably the headline feature. It’s taken Kobo a long time to catch up with Amazon in this regard, but Kobo fans can finally have their favorite titles read to them, as long as the audiobook has been purchased from the Kobo Store. Since the launch of the Libra 2, every other Kobo ereader has boasts Bluetooth support.

Additionally, Kobo has opened up its ebook and audiobook subscription service to more markets outside of Canada and select European countries but, at the time of writing, Kobo Plus has been made available in Australia and New Zealand, not in the US or the UK. Where available, you can sign up directly from the Libra 2’s home screen, giving you instant access to thousands of titles in digital or audio format.

Kobo has upped the internal storage capacity of its mainstream ereader, bumping it up from 8GB to a whopping 32GB (taking a leaf out of the Kobo Elipsa playbook). Another significant improvement over older ereaders is the replacement of the Micro-B charging port to a USB-C option, which has now become the norm across all ereaders. While that makes topping up the battery – which is a higher capacity compared to the Libra H2O – remarkably quick, it slows down dramatically after about 92%, which is our only complaint about the ereader.

There are some minor design changes to the Libra 2 as compared to its predecessor, but nothing to write home about. The thicker bezel has a cleaner look as the crease (found between the page-turn buttons and the screen) on the Libra H2O has been removed, and the new device is just a smidge bigger.

Despite the millimeter difference in size, the screen is still the same 7 inches of the Libra H2O, but is a touch more responsive because of the latest E Ink Carta technology. The difference in responsiveness between the older Libra and the new is minuscule, but if you’ve been using any other older Kobo, the Libra 2 is definitely worth the upgrade just in terms of performance and storage.

All the other Kobo perks are onboard, of course – a much wider file format support compared to the Kindles, a more streamlined user interface and, importantly, baked-in OverDrive and Pocket support.

Take all these individual ingredients, stir them into a single device and you’ve got the winning recipe for the best bang-for-buck ereader, despite the price hike. All we need now from Kobo is an ereader with a color display.

Kobo Libra 2 review: price and availability

• Announced October 2021
• Launch price of $179.99 / £159.99 / AU$279.99
• Kobo Plus available in select markets

Kobo announced the global launch of the Libra 2 on October 6, 2021 for a price of $179.99 / £159.99 / AU$279.99. Since then, however, Kobo has upped the price tag to $189.99 / £169.99 / AU$299.99.

Despite the higher cost, the Kobo Libra 2 remains competitively priced, particularly when you take into account its storage capacity of 32GB. It's a lot cheaper than the 8GB Amazon Kindle Oasis’ $249.99 / £229.99 / AU$399 price tag, and even offers better value than the 2021 Kindle Paperwhite that will set you back $139.99 / £129.99 / AU$239 for 8GB of storage, a 6.8-inch display and no page-turn buttons. And it's priced well when compared to the 32GB Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, but for $189 / £179 / AU$289, you are getting wireless charging on the premium Paperwhite model.

The Libra 2 is available to buy directly from the Kobo Store online or at major retailers worldwide.

The Libra 2 (and the Sage with it) debuted Kobo Plus, an ebook/audiobook subscription service to Australia and New Zealand for AU$13.99 / NZ$14.99 / CA$9.99. There’s no word yet on Kobo Plus availability in the US or UK, but it has been available in Canada since 2019 and The Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal since 2020.

Kobo Libra 2 review: design and display

• Minor design tweaks
• E Ink Carta 1200 display
• USB-C port

Amazon might have been the one to pioneer the asymmetric design now shared by several ereaders, but Kobo seems to have embraced it completely. Out of the eight ereaders in its current catalog (the Libra H2O is still available in some markets), four have the page-turn buttons that make single-hand use so easy – clearly Kobo means for that design to stay and we’re all for it.

That design, though, has undergone a slight refinement. In the Libra H2O, there was a crease clearly visible on the thicker bezel, which is no longer there on the Libra 2. Even the little recess between the two page-turn buttons on the Libra H2O is gone, instead giving the Libra 2 a slightly cleaner look despite the plastic chassis.

Speaking of bezels, the other three are oh-so-slightly bigger… by a millimeter or so. It’s hardly noticeable, but that means the Libra 2 has its own sleepcover range. It’s also marginally heavier than the Libra H2O, weighing 215g compared to 192g.

The charging indicator light – which also blinks when the device is being powered on – is now lower down the thicker bezel, sitting almost in a corner. And on the side of the thicker bezel, close to the indicator light, is the USB-C port. This replaces the Micro-B socket that was on the older Kobos and Kindles, and can be used for both charging the ereader and transferring files from a computer.

The rear is still textured, offering a very good grip, while the power button, which is still recessed but not as deeply as in the Libra H2O, is easier to press in the Libra 2 as compared to the older model.

Also still recessed is the screen on the Libra 2 as in the older ereader, not lying flush with the bezels as on the Kindle Oasis or the Kobo Sage.

The display is still 7 inches, but it’s the latest E Ink Carta 1200 screen that boasts a 20% increase in response time and 15% better contrast compared to the Carta HD display on the Libra H2O. In real-world use, that difference is marginal as compared to the older Libra model – likely because it uses the same 1GHz processor as the predecessor – but a significant improvement compared to the older models like the Kobo Forma or Kobo Clara HD. Screen resolution, however, remains at 300ppi, but the new screen tech adds a dark mode where white text appears on a black background.

The Libra 2 shares the patented ComfortLight Pro screen technology available on all Kobo ebook readers, comprising white and amber LEDs arranged along the bottom of the screen that project light evenly upwards. And ‘evenly’ is exactly how it works – there are no bright spots or shadow areas, not even a light gradient considering the frontlight is unidirectional.

As before, brightness can be adjusted on screen via a slider on the top menu bar or by sliding a finger along the display beside the thick bezel. There are no ambient light sensors aboard, but the ability to set the light temperature to change from cool to warm (or vice versa) depending on time of day is available – something that’s missing on the more expensive Kindle Oasis.

Despite weeks of use of the white model of the Libra 2, we couldn’t see a single scuff mark or oily fingerprint. We’re unsure whether the black option holds up as well, but if the H2O was anything to go by, it would look just as clean unless your hands are particularly oily or sweaty.

The entire ereader can be submerged in a maximum of two meters of water for up to 60 minutes, thanks to its IPX8 certification. If you’ve got the skill to read underwater (an amazing skill indeed), you can easily do so in the pool – while the touchscreen won’t quite work because the water tends to interact with the display, the page-turn buttons will keep you going.

Kobo Libra 2 review: ebook and audiobook experience

• Auto-rotates orientation
• Easy Bluetooth setup
• Sideloaded fonts supported

We’ve been massive fans of the Kobo experience here at TechRadar – the UX is clean and keeps on improving with each firmware release. The update that debuted with the Libra 2, however, moved the Wishlist tab from out of ‘Discover’ and nestled it under the ‘More’ tab on the home screen – we think it’s old spot under the Discover tab was better, but this is us just nitpicking, really, and it didn't take long to get used to it. 

It’s pretty hard to fault the reading experience of a Kobo, particularly one that can be oriented in either landscape or portrait mode, or locked into either orientation. No matter how you like to read, the text on screen rotates instantaneously. In similar fashion, page refreshes are clean and barely noticeable.

The screen renders copy in sharp lettering, with several font sizes to choose from. You can even change the font to any of the default options, or sideload your preferred ones without a hassle. 

It’s not just the font support that’s great here; file support has always been Kobo’s strong suit. 15 file formats are supported, including PDF, JPEG, GIF, TXT, HTML and the two comic fonts of CBZ and CBR.

While reading regular ebooks is an absolute pleasure on the Libra 2, comics can be a little difficult on the 7-inch screen. Depending on how the comic or graphic novel is laid out, some frames or speech bubbles can get cut off.

But no matter the file size, we never found the device to slow down, hang or lag.

If you’re a fan of dark modes on all your digital devices, then you’ll love the Libra 2. The Carta 1200 allows for a dark mode and you can set the tablet to display white on black by heading to the Reading Settings pane. This, however, only makes ebooks appear in inverted colors, not the home screen or the settings panes. Even the top menu options available by tapping on the screen will be in the usual black-on-white setup and not in dark mode.

It’s a similar situation with the auto-orientation as well – this works only for ebooks (in any format), but it does not change the orientation of the home screen, which is always in portrait mode. That’s really not much of an issue at all, but it’s well worth mentioning.

The latest screen tech hasn’t removed the issue of ‘ghosting’ though. This is where you can occasionally see a light image of the previous screen/page – particularly if there are pictures – overlaid on the current page. This is an issue with every E Ink screen we’ve seen and, to be honest, the overlay is so light, you’ll either get used to it really quickly (if you’ve never used an ereader before) or barely even notice it. 

When it comes to audiobooks, you can only listen to ones you’ve purchased from the Kobo Store. Some libraries might give you access to audiobooks, but if they’re in MP3 format, they won’t play on the Libra 2. This is the first time we’ve seen Kobo go against its claims about the openness of its ecosystem, but it’s also the first time the company has offered audiobook support, and we hope Kobo makes it more inclusive in future.

Pairing with Bluetooth headphones was remarkably easy for us – just like how you’d do it on a phone.

The controls available on the Libra 2 are the play/pause options and skipping 30 seconds back and forth. Like a chapter list on ebooks, there’s a track list as well, which corresponds to different chapters in the book, and you can select any of those if you wish to start in the middle. The audiobook control panel also gives you access to statistics on the titles you’ve listened to, including how long you’ve listened, how much is left and a graphical representation of the chapters.

Audiobooks continue to play if you put the screen to ‘sleep’ and you can use your headphones’ controls to play and pause too.

As with all Kobo ereaders, having OverDrive on the device means you’ll be able to borrow ebooks from a local library that supports the platform – all you need is a library card. This feature works in most countries that Kobo is officially available, unlike Kindles where borrowing library books is only for US customers.

For anyone who uses Pocket to save and read longform web articles offline can log into their account on the Libra 2 and use the tablet to read those articles. 

Kobo Libra 2 review: battery life

• 1,500mAh capacity
• Excellent battery life
• Quicker charging than before... sort of

Another upgrade over the Libra H2O on the new model is the battery capacity – that’s been upped from 1,200mAh to a more generous 1,500mAh. On a single charge, we squeezed out an average of 54 hours of use, and that includes a mix of reading, listening and browsing the Kobo Store, plus with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi always on, screen brightness set at 15% at all times and pages set to refresh once per chapter. 

To put that number into perspective, that’s about seven weeks of use for anyone who reads about an hour a day. Even if you’re an avid reader and spend three or four hours a day reading and browsing the Kobo Store, you’ll still easily eke out three weeks or more, depending on how bright you like your screen to be and how often you've got page refreshes set up for (yes, that does consume battery). And that’s remarkable for an ereader.

Topping up the battery, however, is a different story – and a confusing one at that. In testing, we found the Libra 2 went from an almost empty battery to 92% in about 50 minutes (a significant improvement)... but then slowed way, way down. While 'trickle charging' a battery as it approaches its full state is theoretically a good thing for its health and lifespan, the sheer difference in speed was baffling: that last 8% often took up to an hour to complete.

Another unexpected behavior is the battery percentage displayed on the device’s ‘sleep’ screen as soon as you plug in the charging cable – it shows you the percentage at the time you set up charging, then gets stuck there. It doesn’t update as the battery tops up and is rather misleading as it gives the impression that the Libra 2 isn’t charging at all. That’s exacerbated by the fact that the indicator light stops blinking a minute after the charging cable has been attached.

The only way to reliably know that the battery is being charged is to keep the screen on and tap on the battery icon. This brings up a box that displays the ‘estimated time remaining’. The timer ticks down to zero seconds at about the 92% mark, after which it just displays ‘charging from USB’ for the remaining 8% or thereabouts. So even the Libra 2 doesn’t seem sure whether its battery has topped up or not after a certain point.

We’re unsure whether this is a software glitch and fixable via a future firmware update, but these battery shenanigans don’t affect the performance of the Libra 2 in any way. You can continue using it while it’s charging, even listen to audiobooks. And, to be honest, even if you stop charging the ereader at 92%, there’s days, if not weeks, of battery life available for you to not really worry about it.

Should I buy the Kobo Libra 2?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

[First reviewed December 2021]