Review: Kobo Libra Colour - using the writing features (part 3)

In part one I talked about the unboxing and getting to know the device, while in part two I looked at the reading experience. In this final part I'm going to be talking about the stylus and writing features.

Getting to the notebook feature, and pairing the stylus

When you first power on the Kobo Libra Colour, the menu options down the bottom are the same as the Kobo Aura - just Home, My Books, Discover, and More. Going into the more menu there's the option for "my notebooks (view only)".

Tapping into the "my notebooks (view only)" option presents you with a pop up telling you to "activate a Kobo Stylus for full notebook access". Initially, touching the stylus to the Libra does nothing - it's not yet paired. The pairing process is quick, and the Libra takes you through the steps after you've chosen the "Activate Kobo Stylus 2" option - simply plug the stylus in to power for a few seconds, and then touch the screen.

Kobo Stylus 2

Weight wise the stylus is acceptable - not too heavy and not too light at around 14 grams. A lot of the fountain pens I use are heavier, so I'm certainly not going to get fatigued by the Kobo Stylus. I opted for the second version of the stylus (I don't know if the first version works with the Libra Colour), which gave me a built in eraser and had a magnetic side. Storing the stylus is a simple case of magnetically attaching it to the side of the Kobo, which is still possible through the SleepCover.

Near where your thumb is as you hold the stylus is a button that switches you to highlight mode. In books, the highlight colour is chosen once you've performed the highlight action. For notebooks, the colour is based on the colour last chosen when the pen mode was set to highlighter at the top.

I will say the Kobo Stylus 2 isn't as elegant as an Apple Pencil, but the Stylus is perfectly adequate. Kobo also includes two replacement tips in the box, with additional tips available to purchase. I don't know how often those have to be replaced yet. Charging the stylus is a case of connecting a USB-C cable to the side of the unit.

Stylus battery charge

Obviously the amount of time it takes to run the stylus out of power will depend on usage, but I'm not having to charge it more than once every two weeks at the moment. When the stylus' battery runs low there's an orange light that blinks near the USB-C port. You'll also get a warning on the Libra that the battery is low. I made the assumption that the message meant to charge the battery, rather than somehow replace it in a new device!

Interestingly, the battery monitor for the Libra will then sometimes still say the stylus battery is OK.

Pressure sensitivity

I was pleasantly surprised to find the stylus is pressure sensitive, so pressing harder (not too hard!) on the Libra's screen would allow you to get a difference in line thickness. This seems to vary per pen style in use - the "fountain pen" setting definitely supports sensitivity, whereas the "ballpoint pen" setting doesn't always seem to (or maybe I imagine it).

Notebooks

There are two notebook modes - basic and advanced. In a basic notebook you can write anywhere you like on the page, and can set different page backgrounds from a provided selection (to do list, lined, dots, grid, etc.) - backgrounds are per page so you can have multiple per notebook. Basic notebooks have defined pages and, as the name implies, the fewest features. You can still tell the Libra to convert your hand writing to text though, which it does fairly well.

Advanced notebooks act as though you have one long piece of paper, rather than distinct pages. For the most part you are constrained to writing in between the horizontal lines, but you can add diagrams, formulae ("maths equation"), and free form areas. As you'd expect, you can convert hand writing to text.

Generally I prefer to use the basic notebook, as my brain thinks better in individual pages.

Colour

I mentioned in part one that the colour displayed is quite muted - a bit like looking at a colour newspaper. Remember that this is not a colour LED / LCD screen. Colour vibrancy is affected by the screen brightness setting - the greater the backlight setting, the richer the colours appear. When using the black pen you get the best contrast and clarity. Other colours (red, orange, yellow, dark green, green, pink, blue, mauve, grey) can be harder to tell apart in dimmer light, especially if the pen thickness is thin. When trying to take a photo to demonstrate this it became very apparent that the ambient light in the room has an impact too - my photos looked almost identical. There's a very slight increase in colour saturation with the backlight at 100% in these photos (look at the yellow and mauve).

Pen types

There are five pen types (ballpoint, fountain, calligraphy, brush, highlighter) and five thicknesses. When using real pens I prefer extra fine nibs which are quite thin, and for the most part I use the thinnest setting when working on the Kobo too. In the photos above, the "Light" annotation is written using the middle (third) thickness. Please excuse the handwriting - I'm not used to writing on a screen yet!

Notebook limitations

Sadly you cannot re-order pages in notebooks, and it's not possible to view thumbnails of your pages to allow you to jump directly to a page. These would be really useful features, so I'm hoping Kobo introduce something like this in the future.

Exporting notebooks

You can export basic notebooks and choose to export the whole notebook or just the current page. Options are PDF, PNG, and JPEG. When exporting advanced notebooks your options are Word (.docx), Text, and HTML), and the whole notebook gets exported.

I exported the advanced notebook that had my writing sample (above) in it as text. This converted the notebook to text as expected, and it made a reasonable conversion:

Ballpoint per, 2ⁿᵈ thickness
Fountain pen, 2ⁿᵈ thickness
Calligraphy pen, 2° thickness
Brush pen, 2nd thickness

Exporting a basic notebook as PNG shows the colours are much more vivid. On the Libra, the yellow and pale green looked almost the same, yet in the export we can clearly see there's a difference.

Exported notebooks are found in the Exported Notebooks directory on the device, with the original notebook file saved as a .nebo file in the My Notebooks directory. You cannot manage the exported files from the Libra itself, so any deletion has to be done via your computer. Alternatively you can export to Google Drive or DropBox - I don't have either set up.

Notebooks online

Notebooks synchronise with your Kobo account, so if you login using a browser you can view them in a read only form. The colours are much more vibrant online, like in the writing sample above, and any background you've set in a basic notebook isn't preserved. I've also noticed that my notebooks are duplicated, so something has clearly gone wrong. That probably explains why I got a sync error the other day despite only having one device:

Annotating books

If I'm reading a technical book I'll sometimes add notes in the margins or underline text that's particularly important to me. Being able to write directly in the book was incredibly useful lately though when I was proofreading an English translation of Underwood by Michele Thiella. Michele had used AI to translate from Italian, and I was able to circle, highlight, and make notes of changes that I'd propose.

Annotations will obviosusly move around if the text size is changed. Fortunately Kobo has allowed for that and places an icon on the page where the annotation was. Tapping the icon allows you to open the annotation viewer, and gives the option to return to the settings of the time.

Each book also has an annotation list that's visible in the same pop up as the table of contents.

Annotated books on non-writing devices

I wondered what would happen to books that I'd annotated if I viewed them on my older Kobo Aura, which doesn't support writing. First, I coloured in the penguin that forms part of the publisher's logo. I then highlighted some text on a later page and added an annotation.

After syncing both Kobos and opening the book on the Aura, the page that held the publisher's logo just shows as blank - I guess that's the "safest" way to cope with drawings / annotations. The next page, with my highlight and annotation, shows the highlight in grey (expected, as there's only one highlight "colour" on the Aura) but the hand written annotation is gone completely.

I added a highlight on the Aura and synced both devices again. Pleasingly the new highlight showed on the Libra, and importantly my earlier highlights, annotations, and "artwork" had been preserved.

Conclusion

As a device, I really like the Kobo Libra Colour, with its companion case and stylus. I primarily use the notebook feature for to do lists and brief notes at the moment, but that may increase over time. I'm still very attached to my fountain pens, so it's unlikely this will replace my real pens for full on note taking.

The device does really well at letting me read books too, and having started a book recently with colour photographs it's really good to have the colour eInk screen. If you're after colour eInk but don't need the notebook functionality then the Kobo Clara Colour may be a good fit for you.

I'd certainly recommend the Kobo Libra Colour though 🙂.

Banner image: Photograph of my Kobo Stylus 2 resting on my Kobo Libra Colour.