Packaging and Accessories

If you order the KOBO online then the box that it comes in may be different as I went in store to buy the Kobo Touch, also the packaging may differ depending on where you order the Kobo touch from. The Kobo touch comes in a box with a picture of the Kobo on the front and the specifications on the top. The back of the box holds additional information about the Kobo and so does the one side of the box. You open the Kobo up from the side and you pull out the contents like a drawer. The box then splits into two where on the right the Kobo Touch is found and on the left are all the wires and the guide on how to use the Kobo. The Kobo touch is protected by two pieces of hard foam on the top and the bottom which do a good job of keeping it still, there is a plastic screen protector on the front of the Kobo and the Kobo is surrounded in cardboard to keep it safe. The packaging is actually quite strong and stylish so during transport the Kobo should be perfectly safe.
The KOBO Touch

The Kobo Touch that I have is black in colour and is made out of plastic and a soft touch material that is on the device. The build quality is great with the device looking very sleek and it is easily held in one hand. The soft touch material is also of very good quality, it is scratch resistant and also fingerprint resistant. The front of the device does attract some finger prints but they are easily wiped away and so not stay very long. The Kobo logo on the top is white and so looks great on the device. The back of the Kobo touch is quilted and feels great when holding the device. I've had the Kobo Touch for a while now and I haven't had any deep scratches or any other damages to the Kobo and so the build quality is actually fantastic. The Kobo is also incredibly light at around 221g which is less than most paperback books and so holding the Kobo is not a problem. The Kobo Touch Only has two buttons and that is the power on button that is found on top of the device, the button is silver and is a slide button and there is a symbol that tells you that the button is the power button. Other than the power button there is only one other button which is the silver button on the front this is used to go back to the home page. There is a microSD card slot which allows you to expand the 1GB memory that already comes with the device to much more. There is also a micro usb socket on the bottom of the Kobo Touch that is used for charging and syncing new books to the Kobo touch. The only other thing that is on the device is the 6 inch e-ink screen that is also a touchscreen and you control the Kobo touch by using the screen.
Features

The micro SD card slot is a big bonus for me and I think that is an amazing feature for the Kobo as you can expand the memory to hold more books. The 1GB of memory that is included is said to hold 1000 books and that depends on the size of the books that you put onto the Kobo Touch, however with an microSD card you can hold thousands more which is superb. MicroSD cards aren't that expensive either and you can buy some for only a few pounds now. The Kobo Touch also includes a reset button found at the back of the device. You use a paperclip to reset the device, I have never used this feature but at least it is included encase of something going wrong.
The screen is very good as well. The touchscreen works well and is very responsive, I've only had a couple of times where I have had to flick to change page a couple of times to change the page but this has hardly happened. The e-ink screen is very good, there is hardly any glare even in very light places and this makes reading very easy. The writing is very defined and easily readable on all books, the colour also changes as you change books which is great. Covers and pictures in books also look pretty good and the Kobo Touch does well to try to convert them into black and white.

A great thing about the Kobo touch is you can choose different fonts and other things to change the books and how you read them, this makes it much easier to read in some cases, this is another fantastic feature that the Kobo has and one that I use very often. Another great feature about the Kobo Touch in my opinion is that when you turn it to sleep mode or power it off it shows the cover of the book you are currently reading it also shows you how far through the book you are as a percentage at the bottom of the screen. I like this because it reminds you of what you reading.
Navigation on the Kobo touch is very simple and easy. When you start up the device it will process new books and then once it has loaded you have a tab that shows you what you are reading and how far into the book you are. There are also other tabs that show the shop, what documents you have on the device and also the library which shows all the books on you Kobo Touch. To change to a different tab you just have to click it, it's very simple to use and learning how to use the Kobo only take a couple of minutes. You also have the full QWERTY keyboard that pops up and this makes it extremely easy to search for different books and do other things on the Kobo Touch. Navigation is simple and incredibly easy.

One feature that the Kobo has that not many other E-readers have is PDF support. This is an amazing thing that the Kobo has; you don't have to spend time changing or formatting different books into the right one, if you have a book that is a PDF then you can just add it straight to the Kobo Touch and you can read it just like you would a book. You add the PDF just like you would a book and it works perfectly. This feature is one of the best things for me as it saves huge amount of time. Most books including PDF's also have the ability to turn them landscape so if you want to change your view then you can choose landscape or portrait just by rotating the device to the side.
Another great feature that I think is included in most e- readers now is the dictionary. The dictionary can be selected by the menu which comes up when you click and hold down onto the screen, the screen then comes up with two cursors which you drag and then you just click on the definition and it comes up with the dictionary definition and how you pronounce the word. The dictionary can be used in all books as far as I know that are from kobo books however the dictionary is not available in books that you download from another source, this may change in the future with updates from Kobo, I have used it on my KOBO many different times and on many different books and it works every time, this is a great feature that I think many people find very useful.

The battery life is also great on the Kobo e-reader, this tends to be the case with most e-readers as the screen and other things use very little power and so the battery lasts for days. I have used the Kobo heavily and it lasted me many days. The battery life is quoted to last for up to two weeks but that depends on how much you use it per day. The battery life is fantastic though, and it still lasts as long as when I first bought the Kobo. The battery takes up to 3 hours to fully charge and you can charge it via an usb connection to a computer or laptop or you can use a wall plug that has an usb connector. The LED at the top of the Kobo e-reader tells you when your Kobo is fully charged by showing a blue light. The battery life is shown to you in the menu; it is a battery icon that goes down in colour when your kobo loses battery.

The Kobo e-reader does not come with 100 free books which I think the other Kobo devices do come with, instead the Kobo touch comes with previews which shows you the covers or parts of the books but it does not offer the whole book. This may be a downside for some however I don't think it is a problem because if you don't want to read the books then its fine and also it just gives you more space to add your own books. The Kobo Touch also has the ability to read newspapers or magazines which is also a nifty feature that I don't really use but im glad that it is included as many other people may use the feature.
A good feature that is included is the ability to magnify what you are reading so that the font becomes larger and books are easier to read. There is a slight problem with this feature though as when you magnify the text it doesn't fit all on one page and so navigation becomes harder however the actual feature is very useful and simple to use and I am glad that they have included a feature like this as it is one that I use on a regular basis.

One of my favourite features about the Kobo touch is the ability to share your books across many platforms. Using the Kobo desktop software you can sync all your books to your phone whether it be android or Ios or any other operating system, this also includes tablets like the Ipad. Other than that you can obviously read on your desktop computer and the Kobo Software can be used on Mac and Windows. I have used this feature a few times and it works incredibly well however I don't have a tablet and so this feature can be used even more by a lot more people.
The Kobo touch also has a neat feature that you can use while reading books. The Kobo allows you to choose different pages, when you click onto the screen the menu comes up and you are given many options such as change font or line spacing, you are also given a few buttons which allow you to change chapter or go to a previous chapter. This menu also allows you to change pages this is useful because the Kobo Touch's preset is to only refresh the page after every 6 page turns, this can be changed but if you would like to leave it as it is then you can change pages by just using this feature in the menu. Most e-readers probably have this feature to skip chapters but it is a nice feature I think that the Kobo Touch has and is definitely one that I use often.

The Kobo Touch also comes with the Kobo desktop software which you can install directly from your Kobo Touch. The Kobo Software allows you to manage books that you have bought or other books in your library. You can use the software to basically manage your Kobo. You can delete books from you Kobo or add new ones to your device. The Kobo software can also be used to buy books and do a few other things. I do think that the software included is good and useful but I don't really use it much as there are other software's that are better in my opinion but it is still great addition.
Like most e-readers the Kobo comes with Wi-Fi that is used to buy books from the built in Kobo store. The Wi-Fi is good and is quite fast depending on your connection. You can only buy and download books to your Kobo if you have a Wi-Fi connection and so if you are using the Kobo outside were you don't have a connection you cannot buy or download books to your Kobo. The Wi-Fi doesn't drop out much either and I usually get quite a quick connection. You do not have to set up the Wi-Fi to use your Kobo or to use the store as you can just use the Kobo software that comes with the device to access the store from there.

The Kobo store is actually quite impressive as it says that you can search through millions of popular books, this is actually quite true as the Kobo Shop has a huge collection of books that you can buy on the go. The store does not have every book and so if you cannot find what you are looking for you can just download it from another source and just put it on your Kobo touch. I use the store a lot mainly on using the built in Wi-Fi and it is very useful to have in my opinion. The price is also good for the kobo e-reader touch as you can pick it up for around £70-£80 pound from a few retailers; this is a good price considering what you get; a touchscreen, great storage, good screen and many other features.
The Kobo Touch also has a built in Web browser which is fast and simple to use, you can easily search things that you would normally do on your computer without any hassle. I don't really use the web browser that often but it is very nice to have and it allows easy access to anything you want to search. The Kobo Touch also has great software updates as when I first got my Kobo device I had problems with the line spacing options but then they released an update which allowed you to change the line spacing and a bunch of new features to, so the updates are very useful and easy to install.

The one thing that I have found with the Kobo Touch is that on some books the fonts can look washed out and are very hard to read, as I previously mentioned overall the fonts are great and it is only a minor problem but in some cases it is very difficult to read the books because of the fonts this will more then likely be updated though with new updates and so that i why i have put it in the good points part as they release updates every so often and the last update did contain a few new fonts.
Bad Points

There are a few bad things that I don't like about the Kobo touch. One thing that I don't like about the Kobo Touch is the time it takes to sometimes change the page in a book, you can be waiting a considerable amount of time and then you might click the screen again to change page and it automatically jumps two pages into the book. It can become time consuming and although it doesn't happen that often it can still be frustrating.
Another thing about the Kobo Touch that I don't like is also to do with the amount of time it takes for the Kobo to process new books that you have put onto your Kobo device. Depending on the amount of books you put onto the device it can take quite a while for it to process it all. Sometimes I've only put on a few books and it takes a considerable amount of time to process the books. The time does increase with the size of the book that you are trying to process but even with small books it take a while.

The thing that I find definitely don't like about the Kobo touch is when you try to put new books onto your Kobo e-reader and it stops and freezes in the Processing stage, this has happened to me a few times even when I am not updating the Kobo touch with many books. Thankfully this does not happen every time but it has happened quite a few times and im not completely sure why. I thought that it may be because of the size of the book or maybe that it is the wrong format but this doesn't seem to be the case and I find that sometimes that only put on a few books at a time because otherwise it can become froze in the processing menu. I once waited to see if it unfreezes but I waited for over an hour and a half and it was still froze and it just wasted a lot of my battery in my Kobo Touch.
This is a major problem in my opinion and it really does knock down the score of the Kobo Touch in my opinion that's why it is rated 4 out of 5 stars. However the reason i am not really affect by this is because it has inly happened to me a few times and usually it is a quick fix like just taking a few books off the microSD card, also this problem may be fixed with a future update and that is why it has only knocked off one star and not more.


Another problem that some people may not like is that because the device is Wi-Fi only you cannot actually update you library of books on your Kobo on the go unless you are connected to Wi-Fi. This doesn't bother me so much but I can see it being a problem for some and I would have like if the Kobo Touch came with 3G as then you could actually use the device all the time without having to have a Wi-Fi connection and so you could buy and update your Kobo all the time.
There is one problem with the Kobo Touch but it has only happened to me once and this is when you plug the device in to your computer to charge or sync books and the kobo switches from the charging screen to the your book screen, this is fixed by just unplugging letting your device process and then plugging it back in to your computer. Once however it did freeze for a while on the loading screen but it fixed after a few minutes. Like I said this problem is has only occurred once for me and it is easily fixed but I thought I might add it in just to tell everyone, this problem may also be fixed in the future due to an update or it may have been a fault of mine.

My opinion

I think that for the Price the actual device is great as the build quality is great and the actual screen and features of the Kobo Touch is great however there are a few things that unfortunately cause some problems when using the Device and updating the Kobo with new books. however there are enough features in my opinion to set it apart from the other e-readers as many of these features aren't included with many other e-readers: there are a few features that set it apart like the PDF support but im sure that other devices will have that feature to and there is a few things like the awards and other things that really make the Kobo Touch stand out.
Conclusion

I think that the Kobo has many great features for the price; some of these include the screen, expandable memory and other things. However I was let down by the freezing when processing new books, im not sure of the reason for this problem and I have tried to solve it by changing the amount of books that I put onto the Kobo touch and usually this fixes the problem but it is frustrating. It does not happen all the time and it works most of the time but it has happened enough to make me rate the Kobo Touch as 4 out of 5 as the problem causes a great deal of frustration. To be honest I would recommend the Kobo touch because although there are a few bad features like the freezing these things don't happen all the time and are usually fixed pretty quickly also because the Kobo has so many great features i think it outweighs the bad things.The Kobo is a great device for the price and i think that the Kobo Touch is a great alternative to the other e-readers out there as it offers many of the same features and even more features for a smaller price.
Price and Availability

You can buy the Kobo Touch from amazon for around £80
You can but the Kobo touch from WHSmith for £80
You can also but it from many other retailers for around about the same price.

Recommendation.

I would recommend the Kobo Touch as I think you for the price the Kobo has great support and good range of features and it is cheaper then the other e-readers out there.

Thank you for reading my review on the Kobo Touch. Thanks for any Ratings I will return them but if I miss you let me know. I will also post this review on Dooyoo under the same username.

Funkyshoes3.