Aware that Amazon is launching a new e-reader and tablet today, its rivals are gearing up to unveil their own products. Kobo, for example just announced the $99 Mini and $129 Glo e-readers. They also announced a brand new tablet called Arc and more details about the new products can be found in the following lines.
Kobo Mini costs $79 and comes with a 5 inch E Ink touch display, 2 GB of storage, no expandable memory and WiFi. Kobo also offers social reading features and the next new product is the $129 Kobo Glo, that’s only a bit bigger and has the same WiFi radio and internal storage, plus a microSD card slot. It also offers a 6 inch ComfortLight touch display, with a 1024 x 768 pixel resolution. Both devices are pretty appealing for their prices and I have to say that the products look quite a bit like the Nook tablet.
Moving on to their Arc low cost tablet, this model is powered by Android 4.0 ICS and comes as a follow-up to the Kobo Vox tablet. The Arc recommends books based on personal tastes and the device’s Tapestries feature allow users to “pin” content like books. The specs are decent and include a 1.5 GHz dual core TI OMAP 4470 CPU, 1 GB of RAM, a 7 inch IPS screen at 1280 x 800 pixels and a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera. The device will be available in 8 GB and 16 GB storage versions, with the first price at $199 and the second at $249.
