Kobo | eBooks & Audiobooks

Review by eFreeware

Most reading apps pick a side. Kobo does not: it treats eBooks and audiobooks as two halves of the same library, so a novel you start reading on a phone can be picked up as audio later without losing your place. That single-library idea is the most distinctive thing about it, and it shapes everything else the app does.

It is a free download with more than 10 million installs and a 4.5 average across some 307,885 ratings, which suggests a settled, widely used app rather than a new experiment. The developer has been shipping it since June 2010, long enough for the reading and listening features to have been worked over many times.

This is for people who buy books rather than borrow them, and who want both text and audio in one place. If you read a few titles a month across a phone, a tablet and possibly a Kobo eReader, the app is built around exactly that pattern. Casual readers who finish a book every few months may find the store and the subscription options more than they need.

A catalog that covers most reading moods

The storefront is the part you meet first. Kobo says it offers millions of eBooks and audiobooks, and the range runs from mysteries and romance through nonfiction and fantasy to graphic novels, comics and children's stories. That breadth matters if your reading jumps between genres, because you are not stuck in a single category.

Finding something specific is handled by search, which works by author, title, topic or genre. The trending list refreshes every hour, which is a nice touch if you like seeing what other readers are picking up without hunting through bestseller charts yourself. Everything you buy or add lands in one library rather than being split by format.

The practical benefit is organizational. Instead of one app for text and another for audio, with separate shelves and separate bookmarks, you get a single place where both kinds of title sit side by side. For anyone who reads and listens in the same month, that is a real convenience rather than a marketing line.

Reading comfort you can adjust

Kobo gives you control over how pages look. You can change text size and style, switch on Night Mode for dimmer, easier-on-the-eyes reading, and set the screen to portrait or landscape. None of that is unusual in a reading app, but it is the sort of thing you notice only when it is missing.

Language support is broader than many readers need and exactly what some do: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese. If you read in more than one of those, the same app and the same library cover both without a second download.

The reading experience is therefore adjustable rather than fixed. I would expect people who read for long stretches, or who read at night, to get the most from the Night Mode and text controls, while readers who dip in for ten minutes at a time will barely touch them.

Listening, with a timer for bedtime

The audiobook side has its own player, with controls for moving around a title, pausing and following your progress. There is also a sleep timer, which is aimed at people who listen as they drift off and do not want the book running all night.

Audiobooks are only available in select countries, so this half of the app depends on where you live. On Android, listening requires version 4.4 or higher, which is old enough that almost any current phone or tablet clears the bar.

The sleep timer is the detail I would single out. It turns audiobooks from something you do while driving or walking into something you can also do lying in bed, and it fits the app's general aim of covering the whole reading day rather than one slice of it.

Your place follows you between devices

Start a chapter on your phone at lunch and the same spot is waiting on your eReader at home, with no bookmarking or page-hunting in between.

This is the feature that holds the whole thing together. It is what makes a mixed setup workable: a phone for the minutes you steal during the day, a larger screen for longer sessions, and the same library behind both. Without it, the multi-device story would fall apart.

The syncing covers your position in a book, which is the detail that matters most day to day. It is the kind of feature that is invisible when it works and deeply annoying when it does not, and it is central to how Kobo positions the app.

What it costs to read here

The app itself is free, and there are no ads in it. That is worth stating plainly, because it means nothing interrupts a chapter and nothing is inserted between pages. Kobo makes its money from the books and from in-app purchases.

Kobo Plus, the main paid option, is said to cover 3 million eBooks and 400,000 audiobooks. Plans come in three shapes: eBooks only, audiobooks only, or both. Kobo also pitches the service as commitment-free, so you are not signing up for a long term.

Beyond that, you buy individual titles as you would in any bookstore. Kobo mentions exclusive originals and less obvious titles within Kobo Plus, which is the kind of thing that matters if you have already read your way through the obvious bestsellers. Which plan makes sense depends entirely on how much you read and whether you listen as well.

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious comparison is with a dedicated audiobook service. Those tend to be built around listening alone, with a subscription at the center and no real reading experience. Kobo's advantage is that the same library serves both formats, so you are not maintaining two accounts and two wishlists.

The other comparison is with a general ebookstore app tied to a particular device family. Kobo's reach is wider: the same account covers the phone app, a browser reader and a Kobo eReader, so you are not locked to one piece of hardware. That flexibility is the reason to choose it over a store that only works well on its own devices.

Where Kobo is narrower is in scope. It is a bookstore and a reader, not a library service, so the books come from Kobo's catalog and cost money unless you subscribe. Readers who mainly borrow from a public library, or who want a free source of titles, are looking at a different category of app altogether.

A library worth building if you read and listen

Kobo is a straightforward proposition: one free app, no ads, a large catalog, and a library that holds text and audio together while keeping your place across devices. The adjustments for reading comfort and the sleep timer for listening round out a package that has clearly been refined over many years.

The caveats are about access rather than quality. Audiobooks are limited to select countries, and the books themselves are paid for individually or through Kobo Plus. That makes the app a poor fit for anyone hoping for a free supply of titles, and a good fit for readers who already buy books and want them in one place.

I would point this at people who read regularly and listen sometimes, especially those who move between a phone, a tablet and an eReader. If that describes your habits, the syncing and the combined library are the reasons to install it. If you read rarely, or only ever in one format on one device, the appeal is thinner.

What's new

For our passionate readers who love books as much as we do, we update the Kobo Books app as often as possible to continually improve on its reliability and performance. Here's what's new in our latest release: • Bug fixes and general improvements. Thanks for reading with Kobo Books!