@@Cloudy_vibez I’m not sure. I unfortunately don’t have it anymore but would say that if there is a need for quick typing / precision, the squishy keys might be frustrating to work with for gaming.
Yeah, super confused by this myself! This was using the dev mode sketch pad feature, but I have no idea how it was able to write since it shouldn't have a Wacom layer. This is the only place you can write (no ebook annotation) and it didn't have any sort of pressure sensitivity. Thought it was worth sharing since it was such a surprising behavior, but pretty limited.
I got the mobiscribe which is nice looking and only needs a little wacom pen but the software is terrible especially the pdf reader. If only this thing's software could be swapped into it's body.
Heh I'm in a similar thing. I wanted a reader that size that I could look through textbook problems in a pdf, but still be reader size for regular reading. I thought I could get something to even do the exercises in. I got a mobiscribe but realized you need advanced software features for that to be viable. Good pdf reading, even adding blank pages or partial screenshots. The booxs will do it but they are hard to buy and have a weird vibe. So I'll probably get the kobo and if notes dont work well that's ok I guess.
I’m fairly certain you can…there are two buttons and one should allow highlighting. I’ll confirm in a couple days but am changing to a Libra Colour and waiting on shipping. Since this uses the same technology (MPP/Microsoft Pen Protocol), it functions the same. This Kobo support article describes highlighting via stylus: help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500001927662-Highlight-text-with-your-Kobo-Stylus
Just confirming this is the case! With Epubs: bottom button (closest to nib) allows the highlighting to happen (this is the rectangular highlight style that is also done by one’s finger, not the stylus based highlight), the top button deletes highlights. If you have handwriting and a highlight, both can be erased using the erase button. With PDFs: there are now pen and highlight options. Highlight/bottom button applies the handwritten style and uses whatever stroke width and color you previously selected. Erase works the same as with epubs, erasing highlight and handwritten annotation.
Hi from Italy! I have a question, do you think that the mircrosoft surface pens (and the compatible pens, like the Metapen m2) are compatible with the kobo libra colour? I cannot find any sure information 😢 Thank you so much!!
Hello from NYC :) I believe they would have to be compatible as well since both Kobo Stylus versions work, so that should mean they’re still using the Microsoft Protocol and therefore *should* work just the same as the other Kobo eReaders. I don’t know much about the Metapen but if it is using MPP, I feel like it should be good to go!
@@texnology84the Metapen M2 is absolutley the same identical pen, same body, same light, same eraser, only in gray. I think that there is some commercial agreement and they cannot say that the are the same pens, but they are. I will prove it!! 😂
Great video! I was unsure how this would work and if setting up an Apple ID and adding it to the family would work. You explained it really well. Does the mouse or trackpad also work the same way?
I recently bought this device so to read my growing library of epub manga from Humble Bundle. I think they have improved the software dramatically in the last year. Note taking is still kind of meh, but it does do the job if you need to jot down a note. The device is fantastic for overdrive, manga, general book reading . My battery lasts for days up to a week. Do you use the sleepcover? I do and it seems to work well. Great video!
So am I actually still signed in if I enable side load mode when I never signed out initially? Because if I remove side load mode, I don't have to go through the start screen I am just already signed in
Ah, I wish I remembered to say for certain! The new Kobo Stylus 2 I know called for a cable from the stylus to the Elipsa 2E when you first started using it to pair. Here I seem to be using both without pairing so maybe it automatically connected? Cable based pairing may have initialized both prior to the video though.
Thanks for this. I was told all you had to was log out and you could enable Sideload mode but I couldn’t get it to work. Your instructions worked like a charm.
I bought the surface pen (no clip version) weird enough the eraser writes and highlights but the nib does not work. I wonder whether any one had this problem and come up with a solution?
This video is just what I was looking for, since that information seemed to be nowhere else. Unfortunately it doesn't work, but hey... At least now I know! Thank you.
Hi thanks for your video. Is it possible to increase the contrast of black text in pdf ie make the black more black as it is not possible to increase the font size?
Hi @learningcheme, Unfortunately not. The PDF experience is very lacking in features like that. I know Boox ereaders have this type of capability, but Kobo is limited still to only allowing: zooming, rotation, simple stylus annotation (writing is only available with a single pen option that is a bit too thick in my opinion), highlighting with the stylus (but not by using finger to hold and select a portion of text to select and highlight like you can in an eBook or Adobe Acrobat Reader, for example). And because you cannot select any text in a PDF, you cannot use dictionary for a word like you can in an eBook. So, yeah, a fairly basic experience. I do have a video about their PDF experience where I ramble through some of these problems if you wanted to see any more about it, but I've listed them out here mostly. :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KP36XWKPnpE.html
@@texnology84 Thank you so much for your detailed feedback. There's an offer on this device and my use case is reading PDFs only. I don't think I will buy it now.
Oh dang, sorry to hear that. I’ll have to see if my Nova has been affected. I don’t have a Page, so I don’t know if it ever worked, unless it used to for you and is now broken. Hope it works in the future!
Glad it was useful for you! Definitely hard to hunt down details on some of this kinda stuff without just buying and hacking around with it for a bit. :)
@chinoquant (I tried to find it in one of my videos but surprisingly didn't seem to capture that part!) I'd say the answer is partially. They have an Annotations modal (on the bottom right) for both highlights and markups, and you are able to filter the type of annotation if you only care about markups. It will show a preview of the markup and you can tap to go to that page. But there isn't a way to from 1 markup to the next once you leave the modal, so you would have to go back to the modal each time, but the filtering should remain set to markup so you don't have to toggle it back on each time. Hope that makes sense!
I've been looking to do something similar so this is a really great find! Thanks for the video, do you think you'll be doing any more? One thing I was wondering about was actually using those page backgrounds on the kobo, if we could find where they are stored on the device and add more options, that would be the killer feature I think.
I probably won't for a while as I returned my Elipsa (although if they launch a Sage 2E, it could lure me back in on their stylus-based devices 🙂). I had a similar thought about templates as this Nebo approaches is very hacky and not efficient for making a lot of templates. I looked around their file system via USB, but didn't manage to find any images I could access. Likely it is locked down or in a format not easily accessible, maybe due to people like us wanting to mess with them :p
@@texnology84 it's a real shame but it could be something they licensed from Myscript I suppose, since the nebo app also seems to have some background options? Your video still helped me though with organising my notebooks using import and export! I'm using it for work now and every day I make a new notebook and fill it with all my notes for that day and then at the end of the week I export them, move the pages I want to keep into relevant notebooks, and delete all the rubbish :)
That is great to hear. Glad I could help! I do hope they get around to offering more page management on device like you’re describing. That type of functionality is key to taking notes and arranging them into to proper order, both shuffling in a single notebook and moving to other notebooks.
I'm currently using Boox Nova 3 and also Kobo's app on iPad which now allows writing. Both have their problems too for sure, but I think I have to accept I just want more control/power (specifically with PDFs) even though I really like Kobo's simplicity, ebook store, and other built-in features. I may revisit later, but the bugs I saw still with Elipsa 2E and their slow software releases (4-6 months recently) have me thinking they won't get to where I want for another couple years at the earliest.
@@texnology84 i think book nova is a good choice but you say book nova 3 , I think the more recent is the nova air 2 no ? ( After it is nova air c with colors )
@@Strravigor Yep, I've got the older one (I believe it's from 2020), but it handles most of what I run on it well enough (after I gave up expecting most writing apps to run well aside from the native notes app). I do like the Nova Air2's design but didn't feel the hardware differences weren't compelling enough for me to upgrade, plus it has a smaller battery so I didn't want to deal with that.
Hmm, that sounds odd. Not sure if you’re on PC or a Mac, but I do know that on Mac at least, you have to enable hidden folders visibility to see it and the other hidden folders... I feel like it probably is there in order for the device to be running properly, assuming you haven’t deleted it or anything else has happened. I’d recommend looking up how to show hidden files and folders on your computer and see if that helps, searching for PC or Mac specifically, if you haven’t already. Reddit’s kobo forum or Mobileread forums might have folks who know more if it is deleted and your device isn’t working!
The lag was a little bit slower than what I am used to with my Boox Nova 3, but all in all didn't feel too bad to me. Boox is definitely quicker over all and for sure has more features like page management and copy/paste. Kobo has some stylus bugs to resolve too, like a weird one I saw a few times where you can't write properly. It creates a burst of lines from a single point to any new point until you basically leave the notebook and come back. It also some text disappearance problems I've heard people run into. I think I saw it happen a couple of times from what I recall. I think for serious/heavy writing, Boox and Supernote are the better go-to options. Kobo, I'd say, it great as a reader with *some* writing. Just not mature in features or powerful enough to me at this point.
10.3 is almost half the size of letter sized. Just not big enough for many use cases, especially longer form writing. 13.3 is the other standard and is closer to A4 sized. 10.3 is great for reading.
Ah, good thing to note, thanks for sharing! I have been slowly inching my way up in device sizes, and comparison made it feel like it was closer to letter sized, but I forget the measurements are diagonal and was just going by feel/comparison. I really wish stores around me carried some of these ereader options so I could check them out, 13.3” never seemed like something I’d want but 10.3” has surprised me with how pleasant it can be for more space.
But then 13.3 is 207 dpi resolution compared to 227 dpi for Kobo Elipsa, even though the 13.3 Boox Tab X is really alluring, but waiting for a new 13.3 model coming from Boox in the next few months, maybe color or mono 227 dpi or better yet (can one dream?) 300 dpi.
Well… I went and tested for a few moments on the Elipsa 2E and the results were *all over the place* which surprised me. I have a few .epub file working mostly fine on all accounts (one isn't showing a highlight in the text area, but it did save it in the annotations modal), loaded from Dropbox. But I have a few dropbox Kepubs with annotations/markups and when left the book and returned, everything I added disappeared from the text area. But from the Annotations modal, I see all of the annotations and markup and notes I made, so they are saved. In one Kepub file, the markup wouldn't save when I left the book and returned, but it did save the highlighting. Sooooo, something is definitely buggy, at least with my kepub files, but maybe I did something wrong in Calibre. It does *generally* work regardless of the . 😬 One thing to note, they don't save markups/annotations when you remove the file even if synced via Dropbox.
I am wondering if Kobo is affiliated with Apple at all. I wouldn’t expect the app to use Apple’s tool set. Unless that’s something iPad just does…. Allows apps to use the built-in tools.
Yeah, it is actually part of Apple’s tools available to iOS developers, which benefits Apple’s experiences by helping creating a consistent interaction library across iOS apps, info on the PencilKit available here: developer.apple.com/documentation/pencilkit. To me it is a bit surprising Kobo didn’t use Nebo/MyScript SDK which is how their Sage/Elipsa devices run their notebooks. Maybe it’ll make more sense later on, but does seem to splinter the SDK implementations they use to do stylus based input for better or worse.
Sorry, I don't think I understand. Are you talking about Dropbox folders or Notebook folders? If Notebooks, it is mainly on device. If Dropbox, you can manage that completely from Dropbox.com or using the desktop app and Kobo will view what you've organized there. If you mean ebooks just stored on the device, I don't think there is a way other than Collections with is done using Kobo devices mainly.
@@texnology84 yes sorry, i mean i use usb to transfer ebooks from pc to kobo, but for reorganize ebooks on kobo i have to create folders on it because it is not possible to have same folders of pc.
Ah, I gotcha-I have never messed with it much myself but apparently Calibre might be able to help on Collections. I came across this recent thread but there may be more info around this forum which could give you some more insight, I just haven't ever really tried it myself to know: www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=353095&highlight=collection Not sure if it is side loaded only or what, but looks like the best bet.
Fantastic review. Thank you so much. I'm a reMarkable 2 note taker and Kobo ebook reader user. I own a Sage and an Elipsa first gen. I picked up an Elipsa 2E but ended up returning it. I echo a lot of what you said here! The approach of hardly any updates for the first gen product and then - viola! - here are folders, more templates for the basic Notebook, and Kobo sync for the gen two product... doesn't sit well for me nor does it give me confidence that this will receive gradual improvements, like my rM2 does. I wanted to see if I could use a single device for large screen reading and note-taking but things just don't work as well for note-taking with some weird quirks here and there, Dropbox exporting not working great, and the pen still feeling a little off (I think it's the wobble of the eraser bit and the tip being like an Apple Pencil that I couldn't really get over) that made me simply not TRUST this device vs. the rM2. I agree. It's a hard pill to swallow for gen one users like myself. I do like seeing the improvements, which is funny that they haven't officially been pushed to gen one yet (you can sideload manually to get it though).
Thanks, Christian! Glad to know I'm not alone with some of these issues and attempts to work around some of these scenarios. I was hoping my ranting wasn't too far off base from at least some folks. :p I've run into some more lag today on my 80 page notebook on a pretty blank page, and yesterday got a message about the nib needing replaced...after 1 week of usage, albeit heavy usage but at this rate I'd be spending $150 on nibs a year?? RM2 does look really nice for heavier note taking which is probably more along the lines of what I should be using. I have been eyeing Supernote as well, and after this I may finally have to reel in my Kobo expectations and revise my approach-maybe go with a Libra 2 for reading only, and then have a writing-focused device which can also be more PDF and document focused. Exhausting spinning around but it is hard to settle with some of the trade offs.
Thanks Justin, I am thinking of getting the Elipsa 2E for library borrowing in UK, viewing certain formats of text and sideloaded PDFs of academic papers. A Q. - can you embolden PDF text for reading? Is there a contrast control, for example.
Nope, the PDF controls are limited to a more straightforward toolset: - Features as of today: - Zoom is set as fit to width on initial load - Zoom level and position appear to be set to stay locked into place as you flip pages, so if you basically want to crop in and center, it should hold as you tap to next page (more recent addition) - You can pan around a zoomed PDF - Markup via stylus is limited to a semi medium thickness thickness and single color of black - Highlighter is a single size and single shade - Table of contents from PDF is available - nesting is indented nicely (3 indention levels at least) - Bookmarking (bookmark tool is on top right of screen similar to ebook view which is activated via tapping) - Search (opens to default of Search My Books, not Search Current Read - meaning it is a little slower to get to) - Search results allow you to jump to the previous/next results one by one - but the match word is not highlighted (which the notebooks feature does have) - You can click a search result before it is done searching but it will halt additional results from showing (similar to notebooks feature) - Similar to ebook view UX, there is a menu item to go to a Dictionary search to manual lookup a word - Similar to ebook view UX, you may view your annotations and markup and bookmarks from a modal list - Features Lacking: - No contrast control - so faded out text from a scan cannot be enhanced nor text emboldened - No adding in margin around a doc to basically zoom out from fit to width - No highlighting of text - No dictionary lookup from selected text - No page overview (e.g. thumbnail grid) - No continuous page type view (not that many ereader would be good at it but a common PDF experience on LCD screens I figured is worth mentioning) - No controls that allow you to step through sections a page via tapping (like top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right, and onto next page) - just simply a page by page flow - No comments/notes applied to an area or section of text like Adobe PDF Reader on a computer or Those are the main things I can think of in case useful (and also to help myself remember these details!) :)
Are you sticking with the Sage then? I'm still deciding on if I should keep mine. The Libra 2 and Kobo Elipsa 2E have screen sizes that are too small or too big. I was hoping that Amazon would have released an updated Kindle Oasis to compete with the Kobo Sage. For I think the Sage is unique due it's form factor and note taking features.
Totally agree, Sage is such a sweet spot in a lot of ways. I actually returned my Sage after getting frustrated thinking on battery issues and lack of Notebooks updates. I wish they had been rolling these new features out incrementally instead of waterfall approach 1.5 years later. It leaves users in the dark and unsure if things ever will improve much during the lifespan of their purchase. I may come back around in October if they have a Sage 2E but battery *has* to improve since I use notebooks heavily. With Kobo Cloud, I do think they’ll enable a sync between devices so I could see a future where I might be open to using both for various scenarios
Thanks a lot for the effort you put into this review! Really appreciate the emphasis on the note taking experience. This is extremely helpful to people that are on the fence on this device precisely on that aspect.
@@texnology84 Hi! I specifically bought this pen following your review. However it just sticks out too much on each side 🙈... I do not know how you manage to make it stick without it to stick out too much as shown in the video... Thank you in advance for your help!
@@BertrandMariauxAvocats oh, that is odd it differs. My only thoughts would be to check all directions and rotations, as I think I remember one configuration versus another wasn’t quite the same. I assume they shouldn’t have changed the magnets much (for the PowerCover or for the Renaisser) since it needs to be consistent to work with Microsoft tablets. Maybe there is a problem with that specific one and you could try to exchange it? I unfortunately don’t have the Sage/PowerCover and can’t check it again myself (settled on the Kobo Libra Color with the Renaisser).
I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t. Supernote uses EMR technology whereas these use MPP/Microsoft Pen Protocol. I *might* have seen a person on Reddit say an older Surface Pen maybe worked differently but I’m not for sure. www.reddit.com/r/Supernote/ might have some answers if no one else can confirm here! Big community interacted with often by the Supernote team
Android apps suck on onyx devices. It's so uncomfortable to use onyx for any other purposes than note taking (on the native app) and book reading. It's not because of the refreshing ratę of an e Ink screen but for some other reasons. I find that my boox max 2 works more and more słowy with each software upgrade. There are lags everywhere and things get stuck even when going back from the apps to the main screen.
I actually covered this a little on this video when I had the PowerCover: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-V5PrVFbn2u8.htmlm35s (@ 13min 35sec in that video) I believe since the Renaisser pen is an alternate to Surface, both would interact with the case the same.
I just found out GoodNotes launched their beta android app. It is limited to Samsung devices via the Google Play store, but side loading allowed me to force it through. It crashed a bit and also is freezing my system to where I had to hard reset. But I’ll check in later since it isn’t even officially supposed to run on my device. 😛 I found out it is a PWA which means a non-native, “Progressive Web App”, which means it isn’t going to run as efficiently as an app built into Android system more closely. No idea if this is just for starters or is how they intend to handle their Windows and Android apps (both are using this method I think I saw). I’ll keep an eye open and make a longer RU-vid video later on probably since I really want this to work. I think this is my best bet for syncing cross platform with iPad. Note: beta as of April 2, 2023 doesn’t sync with iPad.
hello! thanks for uploading the video. this is very helpful as i am already using goodnotes and i am planning on getting a tab mini c. i’m wondering if you’ve tried goodnotes subscription which says it can sync across platforms (both iOS and Android)?
If you don’t care about writing with a stylus, the Libra 2 is great because the battery life isn’t an issue (1200 mAh on sage vs 1500 mAh on Libra 2). I think 7” is great and more portable, plus it has the nice newer screen technology as the sage too. I used the Libra h2o for a bit and really enjoyed it until I swapped it out to give larger screens a try and it’s been my favorite of theirs, so I believe the Libra 2 is that with a nice boost of enhancements. I also love the white color option cause it helps hide my fingerprint smudges a bit more. :)
