Comparison Kobo Elipsa 2E vs Kobo Elipsa

— E-Book Reader. A device with an E Ink screen focused on reading: comfortable text without flicker, weeks of battery life, supports EPUB/FB2/PDF and notes, with a warm tone backlight. Compared to a digital notebook, a reader is lighter, cheaper, and more convenient for long reads of novels, textbooks, and articles, but limited in handwritten notes and "grown-up" document work. Ideal scenarios are travel, beach, evening reading, and studying literature without distracting apps.

— Digital Notebook. A device with a pen for handwritten notes, diagrams, and PDF annotations, often featuring text recognition and cloud synchronization. Compared to an e-book reader, it is heavier and more expensive, with slightly less autonomy, but offers broader capabilities: lecture notes, planning, contract editing, and workbooks. While it can also be used for reading, its strong suit is writing and organizing thoughts. If maximum reading comfort is needed, an e-book reader is better, but if handwritten input and work processes are important, a digital notebook is the way to go.

The presence of a touch screen allows you to configure and control the device using the display. However, for greater convenience, in many e-readers, regardless of the type of screen, the buttons still act as the main controls. Firstly, they can be pressed with gloves or wet hands. Secondly, holding a book with two hands is much easier to press the button to turn the page than to swipe your finger across the screen.

File formats supported by the reader that contain text (and sometimes graphic information). The most popular in the CIS are, in particular, FB2, TXT, HTML, WORD (DOC), RTF, ePUB, Djvu and PDF.

File formats supported by the reader that contain multimedia information — graphics or video. The most popular image file formats are, among others, JPG(the standard format for modern digital photography), BMP and GIF; video files — MP4, MPG, AVI, 3GP (video format for mobile devices), FLV, MOV.

Many advanced reader models are able to "perceive" not only e-readers, graphic files and videos, but also other file formats. The most common support for music files: MP3, WMA, in especially advanced cases — AAC, OGG, lossless formats APE and FLAC. Of the non-musical formats, some readers support ZIP and RAR archive files, as well as Microsoft Office documents (PPT(X), XLS(X))

Online storage and synchronization automatically transfer purchased books, personal files, and edits to your device, as well as save reading progress, bookmarks, and handwritten notes; on readers, this allows you to "read at home — continue on your smartphone," while on electronic notebooks, it adds backup, handwriting recognition into text, and quick export of outlines to PDF. Compared to offline USB connection, cloud services are faster and more convenient in everyday use, allowing you to restore your library after a reset and share documents with colleagues, but require an account and internet, so for private materials, it is sometimes appropriate to combine the cloud with local transfer. Typical scenarios include syncing a large library between a reader and an app on the phone, sending lectures from the notebook to email/drive, and searching all notes from any device.

— Headphone output(3.5 mm). A standard mini-jack connector that allows you to connect headphones to an audiobook. Most consumer-grade headphones currently being produced are equipped with a 3.5 mm plug, which makes this connector very versatile. Usually, the presence of a headphone output in an audiobook means that it is equipped with a built-in media player, and headphones can also be used to read text from the screen.

— Dictaphone. The ability to use an e-book as a voice recorder, to record speech and other sounds. To do this, the device is equipped with its own built-in microphone, and to play the recorded material, an output to headphones and/or its own speaker is provided.

— Built-in speaker. The audiobook has its own built-in speaker. The speaker can be used to play audio files, video soundtrack, or read text from the screen; the presence of a speaker, usually, implies the presence in the reader of at least one of the above functions.

— Built-in dictionary. The presence in the software set of the book of an electronic dictionary (or several dictionaries), which allows the translation of individual words and expressions. This feature can be especially useful for those who like to read books in foreign languages.

— Built-in browser. The presence of a built-in browser allows you to view Internet...pages on the screen of the reader; connection to the Internet is carried out using Wi-Fi.

— Built-in audio player. The ability to use an e-book to play audio files through headphones or a built-in speaker. The most common support for MP3 music files; some models are capable of playing other types of audio files, such as WMA, AAC, OGG, and even the lossless APE and FLAC formats.

— Voice reading. The ability of an e-book to read the written text and output it to external speakers or connected headphones. The voice sounds quite monotonous and with a noticeable "computer" accent. Pronunciation, usually, is at a level sufficient for understanding.

— Accelerometer. A device that reacts to shaking and changes in the position of an e-book in space. The accelerometer provides advanced control options: for example, you can change the screen orientation from portrait to landscape and vice versa by simply turning the reader to the appropriate position, switch the music track by shaking, etc.

The frequency of the built-in e-book processor is one of the main indicators that determine its performance (the speed of copying files to the built-in memory, opening larger files, loading Internet pages, etc.). On the other hand, this indicator is not decisive and can only be used for comparison in books of the same model range.

Possibility of expansion of own built-in memory at the expense of replaceable memory cards. In addition to increasing the amount of memory, such a medium facilitates the exchange of information between an e-book and other devices: for example, you can download a book to a laptop equipped with a card reader, write it to a memory card and install the card in an e-book. Note that at the present time several types of memory cards are actively used, and not all of them are mutually compatible; therefore, when buying a book with a memory card slot, you need to pay special attention to the type of cards supported.