Kobo Vox
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We have collected 6 reviews of the Kobo Vox. Experts rate Kobo Vox 4.5/10. Reviewsor.com helps you find reviews, best prices, user reviews of the Kobo Vox and Kobo eBook reader.
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Kobo Vox Reviews
Kobo Vox Review
As eReader manufacturers ease their way into the tablet space, Kobo has introduced the Vox, a competitively priced eReader powered by Android to go up against Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook. At $179, the Vox costs $20 less than the bigger name brands and it offers robust social reading community and a unique anti-glare screen. But is that enough?Click to EnlargeThe most attractive aspect of the Kobo Vox is its plastic "quilted" diamond patterned back. This soft touch material makes for an appealing tactile experience. This quilted backing is also fairly easy to remove, exposing a replaceable battery, something that seems to be a luxury in electronics these days.The screen measures 7 inches, the same size as both the Kindle Fire and the Nook. It looks good, with a 1024x600-pixel resolution and FFS+ anti-glare coating.Measuring 7.57 x 5.06 x 0.53 inches, the Kobo Vox is slightly larger than Amazon's Kindle Fire (at 7.5 x 4.7 x 0.45 inches) despite sharing the same screen size and resolution. The Kobo's angled design, with the front of the device having a larger footprint than the back, only accentuates the size difference.
Kobo Vox review
Made by ebook seller Kobo, the Vox is better viewed as a cheap tablet rather than a straight e-reader -- it doesn't have an E-Ink screen like the Amazon Kindle.Available now from WH Smiths for £150, this low-priced slate, which runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread and integrates with Kobo's ebook service, aims to challenge Amazon -- especially while the latter drags its heels over releasing the Kindle Fire in the UK. But does the Kobo Vox offer enough to keep British bookworms happy?You wouldn't want to hold up a big 10-inch slate for hours on end as you made your way through Lady Chatterley's Lover, so thankfully the Vox has been given a manageable 7-inch screen. That should please those of you wanting to get elbow deep in an ebook. Whether a 7-inch display on a tablet is a good thing or not depends on what you want to use it for. On the one hand, it's just about small enough to fit into a large jeans pocket or a small shoulder bag, but on the other, it isn't the best tablet for sofa-surfers kicking back and scrolling around the web. At 13.4mm thick, it's a pretty chunky beast, especially compared to the 9mm of Apple's iPad 2. With a heft of 402g, it's not exactly lightweight.
Kobo Vox
You can look at the Kobo Vox tablet in a couple of different ways. The objective, unemotional response to it is that it's a middle-of-the-road 7-inch Android tablet that doesn't cost too much got, has OK specs, and a touch of Kobo panache thrown into the interface and the "quilted" back cover that comes in a few different color options. If you want to be mean about it, you could just say, what's the point? Why bother, Kobo? I'll go with the objective view and say the Vox is just sort of a meh product. In terms of specs, it's more in line with 2010's Nook Color than the current Nook Tablet ($249) and the Kindle Fire, which retails for the same $199 price. Weighing in at 14.2 ounces, the Vox has 8GB of internal memory, plus a microSD card slot for adding cards up to 32GB. As with those aforementioned budget tablets, the Vox is a Wi-Fi-only device with no Bluetooth. The multitouch screen seems decent enough with 1,024x600-pixel resolution and an antiglare coating. But what puts the Vox behind the identically priced Fire is its single-core 800Mhz processor. Both the Fire and Nook Tablet offer 1GHz dual-core processors and the Tablet's the winner for built-in RAM with 1GB to the Fire's 512MB (the Vox also has half a gigabyte of RAM).
Kobo Vox
The Kobo Vox ($199 direct) aims to douse the Amazon Kindle Fire ($199, 4 stars) as an inexpensive tablet and ebook reader. But despite sharing a similar look and feel to the Editors' Choice Kindle Fire, the Kobo Vox lacks the power and polish to compete. It does a decent job as a color ereader, but beyond that it feels dated even next to the year-old Barnes and Noble Nook Color ($199, 4 stars). Its sluggish performance, unrefined software, and subpar reading experience make the Kobo Vox a hard sell, even at just $199. Design The Kobo Vox is a black slab, looking a lot like a Kindle Fire or BlackBerry PlayBook ($499, 2.5 stars). At 7.6 by 5.1 by .53 inches (HWD) and 14.2 ounces, it is slightly wider and lighter than the Kindle Fire's 7.5 by 4.7 by .45 inches and 14.6 ounces. The rubberized black plastic back has the same texture as the Kindle Fire and BlackBerry PlayBook, but Kobo adds a raised diamond quilt design. The build quality is comparable to the Kindle Fire, but there's a little more flex in the case, making the Kindle Fire seem more solid in your hand. The Vox has a physical Power button and volume rocker, which I found more useful than the Kindle Fire's single, awkwardly-placed power button.
Kobo Vox review
In the race for the best 7-inch tablet, the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet have zoomed past the competition with sub-$250 price points and well-rounded reading and app selections. But a third competitor with similar tactics has just suited up to take the track: Kobo’s Vox. Kobo itself might have just been acquired by Rakuten, but that isn’t stopping the company from forging on with its own $200 Android tablet. Now, the Vox isn’t as well spec’d as the Fire or the Nook Tablet — it’s only got a 800MHz single-core processor and 512MB of RAM — but it does have a relatively clean version of Android 2.3, access to over 15,000 free Android apps through a third-party app store, and a decent selection of Kobo’s books. So, does the Vox come out of nowhere, weave through the competition, and lead the cheap Android e-reader / tablet race? Or is it simply stuck on Amazon and B&N’s tails? The review below has the answers. Video Review Hardware / design The Vox's design is almost as unassuming as the Kindle Fire's, and that'd be fine if it didn't feel so poorly made in comparison. While the blue, pink, or green color options may distract from the build quality, the black version I was sent couldn't mask the cheap plastic exterior. The edges and the screen (more on that below) are the worst offenders — both just remind me of something you'd find in Toys R ‘Us. To its credit, the single aesthetic distinction — a quilted, rubberish back — does give it a comfortable feel in hand. Still, it's really not enough to make up for the use of supbar materials everywhere else and the thicker frame.
Kobo Vox
The Kobo Vox is a value-priced tablet with a twist. Like its E Ink sibling, the Kobo Touch e-reader, the Vox has a social focus, and places an emphasis on sharing reading experiences. At $200 (as of November 20, 2011), the Kobo Vox is priced the same as the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Color, and $50 less than the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. Though it lacks the video/music download and streaming options that distinguish its competitors, the Vox deserves notice for coupling e-reading capabilities with the multimedia functions of a basic Android tablet. Of the three tablets, the Vox is the most like a true Android 2.3 Gingerbread tablet--which is both good and bad. The good part: You get many of the stock Android apps that come with Gingerbread (email, calculator, contacts, calendar, clock, browser, gallery, YouTube), minus Google apps such as those for Gmail and the Android Market, since this is not a Google device. The bad part: Gingerbread is more designed for phones than it is for the 7-inch screen of a tablet.
Prices
| Retailer | Information | Prices | |
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Kobo K080-Kbo-B Kobo Vox 7-Inch Vivid Color Multi-Touch Multi-Media Screen Black | $99.95 | See it |
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Kobo K080-Kbo-P Kobo Vox 7-Inch Vivid Color Multi-Touch Multi-Media Screen (Pink) | $102.75 | See it |
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Kobo K080-Kbo-U Kobo Vox 7-Inch Vivid Color Multi-Touch Multi-Media Screen (Blue) | $106.98 | See it |
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Kobo K080-Kbo-P Kobo Vox 7-Inch Vivid Color Multi-Touch Multi-Media Screen (Pink) | $112.98 | See it |
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Kobo Vox 7 eReader - Green | $201.08 | See it |
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Kobo Vox 7 eReader - Blue | $201.08 | See it |
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Kobo Vox 7 eReader - Pink | $220 | See it |
