The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is possibly the best e-reader on the market right now, and if you've been considering picking one up, now seems like a good time. Amazon is putting the device on sale for the first time for $145, which is $45 less than the regular price of $190. Since Amazon hasn't offered a discount on the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition until now, it's an all-time-low price for the e-reader.

Amazon announced the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition in September. It's the first Kindle with wireless charging support, though if there isn't a Qi-compatible pad close by, you can charge it with a USB-C cable. Either way, don't expect to charge it often, as Amazon claims the battery can run for up to 10 weeks before you need to juice it up.

The e-reader has a 300 ppi glare-free display that Amazon claims is 10 percent brighter at max setting than previous Paperwhite models. There's a sensor that can automatically adjust the screen brightness depending on ambient light levels and warm light options that may make nighttime reading more comfortable.

The Signature Edition comes with 32GB of storage, which will be useful if you prefer to listen to audiobooks over Bluetooth. The Signature Edition is also waterproof with an IPX8 rating. Amazon says it can withstand immersion in two meters for fresh water for up to an hour and for up to three minutes in 25 cm of seawater, so users can read in the bath without worrying too much about dropping their device.

In our review, we gave the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition a score of 97, lauding it for many of the above features, as well as a larger screen with smaller bezels. Our only real bugbear was the price, which, at least temporarily, Amazon has taken some of the sting out of.

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Apple will host its next hardware event sometime on or around March 8th, according to Bloomberg. At the event, the company will reportedly announce the third-generation iPhone SE, a refresh of the 2020 iPad Air and a new Mac computer that will feature an Apple Silicon chip. The date aligns with the March to April timeframe Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman previously said Apple had set for the SE’s debut but warned potential production delays could force the company to change its plans.

As before, the new phone will reportedly feature a 5G modem, a first for the SE line. It’s also expected to include a faster processor and a better camera. However, it will retain the iPhone 8-era design of the current model. As for the new iPad Air, it too will get a processor refresh and the addition of 5G connectivity. Bloomberg didn’t say much about the new Mac that Apple may announce at the same event, but most recent reports point to the company unveiling a new 27-inch iMac Pro model.

If the idea of a new iPhone SE isn’t too exciting for you, the good news is Bloomberg reports Apple also plans to release iOS 15.4 sometime in the first half of March. Among other enhancements, the update is expected to add a feature that will allow you to unlock your iPhone with Face ID even while wearing a mask.

In a few short days, Samsung will host its first Unpacked of 2022. While the company is sure to stage many more events throughout the year (too many, if you ask us), the first one is always the most exciting. That’s because it’s usually where Samsung has announced the next iteration of its flagship Galaxy S line, and Wednesday’s Unpacked promises to be no different. On February 9th, the company is expected to unveil the Galaxy S22. No surprise there, but there could be more to that announcement than you might anticipate. Let’s break down everything we expect to see from the company later this week.

Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ 

Evan Blass

Much like it did in 2021, Samsung is expected to launch a trio of new Galaxy S phones. As you’ll see in a few moments, the S22 Ultra is likely to be a significant departure from its predecessor. But as for the S22 and S22+, the expectation is that they’ll be more iterative updates.

Prerelease reports suggest they’ll feature a similar design with the same “Contour Cut” rear camera housing that you’ll find on the Galaxy S21 and its Fan Edition offshoot. As far as upgrades go, most leaks point to the Galaxy S22 featuring a new glass back and both phones coming with 50-megapixel main cameras. More interesting is what could be inside the phones.

Evan Blass

As it’s done in years past, Samsung is expected to source two different chipsets for the Galaxy S line in 2022. In North America, the phone will likely feature the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. That would make it one of the first phones to bring Qualcomm’s latest flagship SoC to the US and Canada. Meanwhile, in Europe and other parts of the world, the S22 will almost certainly come with Samsung’s own Exynos 2200.

Announced in January, the 4nm chip features an “Xclipse” GPU powered by AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture. In practice, what makes the Exynos 2200 noteworthy is that Samsung claims it’s capable of ray tracing. Early benchmarks suggest the Exynos 2200 could also be faster than its Qualcomm counterpart. All of that would make the potential differences between the North American and European versions of the Galaxy S22 more notable than in years past.

What we’re less clear on is how Samsung plans to price the Galaxy S22. In a recent tweet, WinFuture’s Roland Quandt said the base model S22 and S22+, both with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, would start at €849 and €1049, respectively. Those prices suggest the company won’t charge more for the S22 and S22+ than it did for the S21 and S21+. However, a separate leak from earlier in the month suggested every model in the S22 line could cost $100 more than its S21 counterpart. We’ll have until the 9th to get a better sense of those details.

Galaxy S22 Ultra

Evan Blass

Shortly before Samsung announced it was hosting an Unpacked on February 9th, company president TM Roh teased the event would feature “the most noteworthy S series device we’ve ever created.”

After component shortages and a pandemic-fueled decline in demand for high-end phones led Samsung to skip the Note line in 2021, the fan-favorite phone is coming back this year. In all but name, we expect the Galaxy S22 Ultra will be the Note 20 successor Samsung fans have been waiting to see for nearly two years. But don’t TM Roh’s or our word for it. In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s Unpacked, images of the S22 Ultra leaked multiple times.

Renders shared by Evan Blass of Evleaks fame suggest the S22 Ultra will feature a dramatically different design from the rest of the S22 lineup. Not only will the phone seemingly come with an S-Pen stylus in the box, but it will also feature a curved display and flat backplate. What’s more, judging from photos shared by Front Page Tech, the S22 Ultra will include a slot for storing an S-Pen inside of the phone.

A set of alleged prerelease marketing images shared by Blass suggest the S22 Ultra will feature a quad-camera array with a 108-megapixel main camera, 12-megapixel ultrawide and two 10-megapixel telephoto cameras with Samsung’s 100x Space Zoom feature built-in. The leaked marketing material also suggests the phone will feature a 6.8-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and QHD+ resolution.

Internally, the S22 Ultra is expected to include many of the same components found in the S22 and S22+. However, one potential source of drama related to the S22 Ultra may come down to how much RAM you’ll find in the base model. According to Roland Quandt, the most affordable S22 Ultra variant will ship with 8GB of memory. At the same time, it will cost as much as the entry-level Galaxy S21 Ultra, which came with 12GB of RAM. Per Quandt, European consumers will need to pay a €100 premium to get the model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. It’s unclear if Samsung will implement the same pricing strategy in the US.

Galaxy Tab S8 and Tab S8 Ultra

Evan Blass

Samsung has been making Android tablets long enough for Google to first abandon the form factor and then more recently declare that it’s the “future of computing.” So it should come as no surprise reports suggest the company will update its Tab line at Unpacked. According to a separate leak from Quandt, we can expect the company to equip the 11-inch Tab S8 with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, 8GB of RAM, up to 256GB of internal storage, an 8,000mAh battery and a 120Hz LCD display.

As for the larger Tab S8+, Quandt suggests it will feature a 12.7-inch OLED display and a bigger 10,090mAh battery while being slightly thinner than its smaller sibling. We’ll note here some reports had said the Tab S8+ could feature a 12.4-inch display. Either way, both models are expected to come with a bundled S-Pen stylus.

But that’s not all, we also expect Samsung to add a new model to the Tab line. Per Quandt, the company will announce the Tab S8 Ultra on February 9th. It will reportedly feature a monstrous 14.6-inch AMOLED screen, up to 16GB of RAM and dual-front facing cameras housed in an unsightly display cutout. It could also come with a feature that would allow you to use the Galaxy S22 Ultra as a separate color palette when drawing with the S-Pen, which is exactly the sort of parlor trick only Samsung would think of to sell you on its most expensive devices.

Everything else

By all accounts, the first Unpacked of 2022 will see Samsung focus on the Galaxy S22 and Tab S8. The company could surprise us with updates to its foldable and watch lineups, but so far there haven’t been any leaks and reports to suggest that will happen. Either way, you’ll want to visit Engadget on February 9th. We’ll have comprehensive coverage of all the company’s biggest news.  

Catch up on all of the news from Samsung’s February Unpacked event right here!

I've never really understood Samsung's Fan Edition branding. To me, fans are the people who are first in line, first to read all the related news and rumors, and most importantly, the first to check out the latest products from their favorite device makers. So when Samsung announced the $700 Galaxy S21 Fan Edition almost a full year after the original S21 came out, it felt long overdue. What we're looking at here is less of a phone for die-hard enthusiasts and more of a remix featuring some of the S21's best traits for a lower price. Unfortunately, all that doesn't solve the S21 FE's problem of it feeling outdated essentially on day one.

Design

Look, the S21 FE might technically be a new phone, but let's not pretend we haven't seen it before. It's got essentially the same shape and design queues as previous S21s, just with a slightly different size. Featuring a 6.4-inch screen, the S21 FE lands squarely between the 6.2-inch S21 and the 6.7-inch S21+. That said, at around six ounces the S21 FE feels slightly lighter than its siblings thanks to some streamlined design changes.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Around back, the S21 FE still features Samsung's Contour Cut design, but instead of having a camera bump with a metal shroud, the phone's back is made from a single piece of matte plastic. (Samsung calls it glastic because it's plastic that kind of feels kind of like glass.) And instead of a two-toned color scheme, the S21 FE is monotone throughout, with a color choice of blue, lavender, bronze, white, red and graphite (shown above).

Elsewhere, the S21 FE essentially has the same design as its forebears, featuring a centrally located selfie cam in front, a power button and volume rocker on the right, and a USB-C port on bottom for data and charging. There's a speaker grille down below that works with the phone's earpiece to provide stereo audio, which sounds fine even if it's a little light on bass for my taste.

Display

Samsung makes the best phone displays in the industry, and even though the screen on the S21 FE isn't quite as big or high-res as the S21 Ultra's, there's not much to complain about. You get strong brightness that tops out at over 700 nits, a 120Hz refresh rate, and 2,400 x 1,080 screen resolution — the same as what you get on the S21+.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

In front, the S21 FE’s display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus. It also houses a handy fingerprint sensor beneath its screen. And while the S21 FE's optical in-screen fingerprint sensor isn't as sophisticated as the ultrasonic sensors Samsung used in the original S21 models, in my experience, it's fast and dependable.

Android 12

While Samsung (and carriers) continue rolling out Android 12 to older S21 devices, the S21 FE comes with One UI 4.0 (which is based on Android 12) pre-installed. Visually, this doesn't have a big impact on the S21 FE's overall UI and layout, though the extra personalization options do make it easier to customize your home and lock screens. And because Samsung's spin on Android has long included support for features like scrolling screenshots, the most important upgrade in One UI 4.0 is the new Privacy Dashboard. In addition to new notifications that call attention to when apps are accessing the phone's mics or cameras, the Privacy Dashboard provides a simple and easily accessible way of managing things like permissions, data and tracking settings and more. At a time when digital privacy remains a constant concern, more control over your data is definitely a good thing.

Cameras

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

The S21 FE's cameras are another area where Samsung's spec shuffle really comes into effect. The phone has a familiar wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto camera setup on its back, but with a lower-res 8-megapixel sensor compared to the 64MP sensor you get on its predecessors. You still get a 3x optical zoom, but from a camera that produces pictures that just aren't quite as sharp or as detailed as a standard S21.

The wide and ultra-wide cameras take great photos, though the S21 FE still lags behind the Pixel 6. For example, in a shot of some toys taken outside, the Pixel 6 preserved highlights on one toy's face, while keeping the toy sitting in the shade from looking too underexposed. In contrast, the S21 FE blew out the sunlit face and eyes without providing much in the way of extra sharpness or detail. Google’s Night Sight also consistently outperformed Samsung’s Night Mode for low-light shots, even though the S21 FE often wasn’t far behind. That said, the S21 FE's cameras aren’t bad; they’re just not as good as the Pixel 6. And let’s not forget the Pixel 6 only has two rear cameras, lacking any sort of dedicated telephoto option like you get from Samsung.

On the flip side, Samsung actually increased the resolution of S21 FE's front cam to 32-MP (up from 10MP on the S21), which is nice if you like a lot of selfies or videos for social media. But at the same time, I don't really think this one upgrade is enough to change the overall impact of the device, leaving it feeling more like a nice bonus and less like a notable improvement.

Performance

At this point, the Snapdragon 888 chip inside the S21 FE is a pretty well-known quantity. It delivers speedy performance and helps support features like 4K video capture across all of the phone's cameras (at 60 frames per second on the main wide-angle and front selfie cams and 30 fps for the rest). However, because the base S21 FE only comes with 6GB of RAM as opposed to 8GB on a normal S21, I noticed the FE felt slower at times, including when it was processing Night Mode photos.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Granted, it's a pretty minor difference, and you might not even notice unless you use the two phones side by side. But for people who do a lot of memory-intensive tasks like gaming or video editing, the FE's lower base RAM is probably the biggest reason to pay $70 to upgrade to the 8GB model or just opt for a standard S21 or S21+.

Battery life

Another bonus of the S21 FE's larger body is that it provides extra room for a bigger battery. So instead of a 4,000 mAh cell like you get in the S21, the S21 FE features a 4,500 mAh power pack, which provides a noticeable improvement in longevity. On our battery test, the S21 FE lasted 16 hours and 55 minutes, or a little more than an hour and a half longer than the S21's time of 15:17. And in the real world, the S21 FE's battery life often feels even more prodigious than that, as I often finished the day with upwards of 40 percent battery still left in the tank.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

It's also worth noting that, like the standard model, the S21 FE doesn't come with a power adapter in the box. So if you want to take advantage of the phone's 25-watt wired charging, you'll probably have to shell out for a separate charging brick. It's annoying for sure, but like Apple, Google and others, Samsung says not including a power adapter with its phones should help cut down on e-waste.

Wrap-up

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

With the supply of standard S21 models starting to dry up, the S21 FE isn't really competing against the originals. It's a replacement that's sadly way past due. It's still a solid phone, but the standard Pixel 6 shoots better photos, has a more attractive design, and if you get the unlocked model directly from Google, it costs $100 less, too. The Pixel 6 is simply the better buy unless you really care about mmWave 5G (which the unlocked Pixel 6 doesn’t support) or having access to a telephoto camera.

Hell, the S21 FE is so late Samsung is already planning to release its next big flagship in the coming weeks. So even if you're a huge fan of Samsung's latest FE handset, at the very least, you should wait to see what the S22 has to offer before purchasing what is essentially a year-old phone. Plus, the arrival of a brand new Galaxy S phone often means discounts are coming soon to older devices.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Oh, and if Samsung wants to keep this whole Fan Edition thing going, what I'd really like to see is a device that better lives up to the branding. Instead of a repackaged year-old phone, why not make a premium remixed version sporting a microSD card slot and headphone jack? Not only would this be a welcome alternative to a lot of today's flagships with minimal ports, but it'd also be a considerate nod to old-school Galaxy phone fans who may have felt betrayed when Samsung removed those features from the S20 in 2019. That's the kind of customer appreciation I can really get behind.

Key specs

YouTube has started rolling out a redesigned interface for mobile that includes quick access to Like buttons and other controls. In the past, when you watch full-screen on Android and iOS, you'd have to exit landscape mode to be able to see the thumbs up and down buttons, the option to share the video and the option to add it to your playlist. It was pretty troublesome having minimize what you're watching to see those controls. As The Verge has noticed, though, you can now simply tap on the screen for all those buttons to show up at the bottom of the full-screen video. What you're watching wouldn't stop playing either.

The new controls at the bottom also give you an easy easy way to access the comments section. There's now no need to go back to portrait mode and to scroll down — just tap the comments button and the section will pop up right next to the video in landscape view. You can keep watching while scrolling viewers' comments, as well. 

Engadget

Google spokesperson Allison Toh told The Verge that the new user interface started making its way to Android and iOS devices on Monday, so it'll likely hit your phones soon if it hasn't yet.

Pretty soon, you'll no longer have to see those weird reaction texts from your iPhone-using friends. Google has started rolling out a feature for Messages that translates iMessaging "Tapbacks" as emojis, according to 9to5Google. The publication first discovered the experimental feature in a deep dive of the Google Messages beta app last year. It's unclear where it'll come out for the stable version, but If you're using the beta app, you'll get the update that enables it soon enough.

When iPhone users react to messages sent from an Android device, the recipient gets text interpretations of that reaction. A "thumbs up" to a text that says "see you in ten?" will be translated to "liked 'see you in ten?'", for instance. It can make the chat thread a bit cluttered and confusing. 

With this new update, the Android user receives emojis instead, though as 9to5Google notes, they're not exact translations of the actual reactions. A "heart" reacts yields the "face with the heart eyes," for instance, while the exclamation mark reaction sends the recipient the "face with the open mouth" emoji. When you tap on the emoji, a note pops up explaining that it was "Translated from iPhone," along with the sender's name. 

The feature is enabled by default, but users can toggle it off if they want by going to Advanced under the Messages' Settings and switching off "Show iPhone reactions as emoji."

If you missed the sale earlier this month, you have another chance to get $60 off Apple's 2020 iPad Air. At the time of writing this, the green, silver and blue models are down to $539, which is 10 percent off and one of the best prices we've seen in months. We considered this to be the best iPad for most people when it first came out and it remains a great option for those that want a powerful, versatile tablet that won't break the bank.

Yes, there are newer iPads available now — even the base 10.2-inch iPad Air received an update last year — but the Air still sits in the middle of Apple's lineup. It runs on the A14 Bionic chipset with a six-core CPU and a four-core GPU, and these discounted models have WiFi 6 support, 64GB of storage and a 10.9-inch Liquid Retina Display with True Tone. The updated, flat-edged design has a USB-C port for charging and a power button with a built-in fingerprint reader for extra security. The iPad Air also supports the second-generation Apple Pencil, so artists and those who prefer to take hand-written notes could use it as their main digital notebook.

While we suggest considering the M1 iPad Pros if you want a true laptop replacement, the iPad Air can act as one, too. It has speedy performance, a 12.5-hour battery life and it can connect to Apple's Smart Keyboard Folio and the Magic Keyboard, so you have a number of ways to turn it into a 2-in-1 machine. There are plenty of perks to the M1 iPad Pros when it comes to productivity, but you'll pay at least $200 more for one of those. So despite the fact that it is almost two years old, the iPad Air remains a good option if you want a tablet that can keep up with you on your busiest days.

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Unpacking is a lovely, relaxing puzzle game made by a small team. It's beautifully designed and manages to tell a compelling story with very little text. Unfortunately, its core mechanic — unpacking boxes and placing items in a new home — isn't exactly difficult to copy. One clone quickly found an audience on iOS and Android before it was removed.

Unpacking Master, which was published by a company called SayGames, was said to be a near-identical copy of Witch Beam Games' title. It adopted a freemium model (users could pay a one-time fee to remove ads) and it briefly topped App Store charts less than a week after it was released. As Game Developer notes, Unpacking Master is no longer available on Apple's App Store or the Google Play Store.

Earlier this month, a spate of Wordle clones barged onto the App Store with copycat developers looking to cash in on the success of the viral hit word game. Those apps were removed as well. These incidents highlight a long-running problem that studios behind popular games (particularly indies) have grappled with.

Knockoff games have plagued mobile app stores for years. For instance, the developers of 2048 made some minor changes to the formula of puzzle game Threes and became a hit. In 2018, publisher Voodoo adopted the central idea of the quirky Donut County (players move around a hole in the ground and swallow up objects) with Hole.io, which soared to the top of App Store and Google Play charts.

In the case of Unpacking, Witch Beam suggested SayGames' clone used almost identical items and very similar level layouts. It said that while other clones failed to find much success, Unpacking Master took off in the wake of an ad campaign on TikTok and Instagram.

"It's demoralizing for a small team like ours to see content we spent literally years planning, refining and handcrafting be hastily reproduced in an opportunistic ad-riddled app a mere 3 months after our launch," the team wrote on Twitter. "We're a tiny indie team and even with the success we have achieved, we still don't have the resources to pursue companies trying to use our game's distinct look and feel to make a quick buck. We have to rely on storefronts like the App Store to better curate their content."

At least for now, the original Unpacking isn't available via mobile app stores, though you can pick it up on PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch and Xbox. It's on Game Pass as well, so you can play over the cloud if you're eager to check it out on a phone or tablet.

Huawei is set to start selling the P50 Pro and foldable P50 Pocket smartphones it announced last year outside of China. The flagship Pro device costs €1,199 and the P50 Pocket starts at €1,299. Those convert to around $1,353 and $1,466 respectively, but don’t expect to get your hands on these in the US.

Along with preventing Huawei devices from easily being sold in the US, sanctions imposed by the country mean that the P50 Pro and P50 Pocket don’t ship with Google apps and services, such as Gmail, Chrome, Maps and the Play Store. That’s despite Huawei basing its HarmonyOS on an open source version of Android. 

Sanctions also inhibit Huawei from sourcing 5G components, so the P50 Pro and P50 Pocket are 4G handsets. Those are significant tradeoffs that might make the P50 Pro and P50 Pocket hard sells, given that they'll likely be more expensive than flagship Apple, Samsung and Google devices in many markets. The next Galaxy S devices are right around the corner too.

Huawei

The P50 Pro has a 6.6-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2700 x 1228 and a 120Hz refresh rate, as well as support for 1.07 billion colors. There are four cameras on the rear: a 50MP True-Chroma main camera, 40MP mono camera, 64MP telephoto and 13MP ultrawide. There's also a 13MP selfie camera.

The 4,369 mAh battery supports up to 66W wired fast charging and 50W wireless charging. The P50 Pro comes with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB of storage.

The P50 Pocket, meanwhile, has a clamshell foldable design akin to Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip devices. When unfolded, users can access the 6.9-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2700 x 1228 and a 120Hz refresh rate, along with support for 1.07 billion colors and P3 wide color gamut.

Huawei

There's a 10.7MP selfie camera and a triple-camera array on the rear. Along with the main 40MP True-Chroma sensor, there's a 32MP ultra spectrum camera and 13MP ultra-wide lens. One interesting feature in the Mirror app enables users to visualize their sunscreen application and check for spots they may not have covered up. 

There's a small, circular display positioned below the camera array, which can display things like notifications and the weather. It allows control over features like music playback and the cameras. The foldable also comes with up to 12 GB RAM and 512 GB of storage. The 4000 mAh battery supports 40W charging.

The two handsets both run on the Snapdragon 888 4G chipset. They'll go on sale in "key markets" in Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America as part of phase one of an international rollout. Huawei didn't disclose the specific markets or when exactly the phones will be available to purchase.

From time to time Engadget editors take time out to talk about what they've been buying for themselves, with their own money. This week, Commerce Editor Valentina Palladino gives her take on the Kobo Libra 2 e-reader.

I’ll be honest, the pandemic took a toll on my reading habits. A lot of the time I previously spent reading was now spent doom- and hate-scrolling on my iPhone. I didn’t want to drag that habit into 2022, so I deleted the biggest scroll-hole culprits from my phone (Instagram, Twitter) and decided to upgrade to the Kobo Libra 2 as a gift to myself.

The Libra 2 isn’t my first e-reader – an old Kindle Paperwhite still languishes in my drawer – but I wanted a change that would both get me out of a physical reading slump while also lessening my dependence on the juggernaut that is Amazon’s Kindle store. I came to this decision late last year after pulling out my old 2018 Paperwhite and reading a book on it. The experience was noticeably laggy, taking several minutes to properly sync my books and fetch titles I had borrowed from my local library. It was also apparent to me how annoying the Kindle was to hold. I primarily read with the device in my right hand, and because the Paperwhite’s size bezels are quite thin, that meant I was often accidentally turning the page when my fingers brushed the screen’s edge.

Enter the Libra 2, one of the company’s latest e-readers whose larger chin is home to physical page buttons. I knew I wanted one with this design, and if I had wanted to go the Amazon route, I would have been left with only the Kindle Oasis to consider. On top of the fact that Amazon’s devices support a limited number of file types, I just didn’t want to drop $250 on an e-reader. Kobo, on the other hand, has four devices with this design, with the Libra 2 being the most affordable of that bunch at $180.

Valentina Palladino / Engadget

The practicality of the larger chin and page-turn buttons can’t be overstated; they’re some of my favorite things about the Libra 2. My hand doesn’t cramp anymore when I read because I can easily switch from one hand to the other depending on if I’m at my desk, curled up on the couch, or peeking an eye out from under the covers in bed. Landscape reading mode has become a favorite, too, and I also like the tactical feel of the page-turn buttons so much that I rarely, if ever, tap the screen to progress in my current read.

The screen on the Libra 2 is also noticeably sharper than that of my old Kindle Paperwhite. It’s a seven-inch E Ink Carta 1200 touchscreen with what Kobo calls “ComfortLight Pro,” which just means you can adjust the brightness and color temperature. I keep the temperature adjustment on the “auto” setting so the screen’s lighting becomes less blue and more yellow as the day goes on, making it my most comfortable screen to stare at right before bedtime. Plus, the numerous font, font sizes, line spacing and margin options let me customize text to my liking, making the entire reading experience more comfortable and enjoyable.

The Libra 2 is also waterproof, but it’s one of those features I don’t actually use every day and I’ll only fully appreciate it if the e-reader gets an unexpected dunking in a hotel pool. Same goes for the audiobook feature: I listen to books primarily through Overdrive's Libby app, so I haven’t tested the Libra 2 as an audiobook machine yet. However, the USB-C charging port is something I can appreciate in my day-to-day as it charges the device from nearly zero to full in a couple of hours. So far, the Libra 2 has lived up to its promise of having a weeks-long battery life as I’ve only had to charge it once in the month or so that I’ve had it.

So the Libra 2’s hardware has proven to be just as good in practice as it was on paper. But in addition to hardware, Kobo’s Overdrive and Pocket integrations were two big things that made me seriously consider making the switch from Kindle. Having all of my reading material in one place – specifically a place that’s not my phone – would surely stop me from falling down a scroll hole every night, right?

The answer is yes – mostly. (I still scroll sometimes, I’m but a mere mortal.) Saving articles to Pocket throughout the day is super easy and I can turn to them at night when I have more time to read. But the kicker for me is Overdrive, which I can browse directly on the Libra 2 and borrow titles from my library with just a few taps. I also use the Libby app in conjunction with this – when Libby and my Libra 2 are signed in with the same library card, any e-book I borrow via Libby automatically shows up on my Libra 2 like magic. Holds also show up on the e-reader with the amount of time I have left to wait; once it’s my turn, a cute little “borrow” button pops up, allowing me to get reading almost immediately. While Amazon’s Send-to-Kindle feature is also an easy way to get library books from Libby to a Kindle, I find this direct integration more convenient.

Valentina Palladino / Engadget

Where this becomes a bit cumbersome is if you have multiple library cards attached to your Overdrive account (which I do). You’ll have to sign out on the e-reader and sign in again with the specific library you’re trying to access. Most people will probably never have to do this, but just be aware if you’re like me and frequently check out multiple libraries’ catalogs with the hopes of getting the shortest wait time possible for your next read.

I try to use my library as much as possible, but it’s also worth noting that buying books on the Libra 2 is also convenient. You can purchase titles directly on the device from the Kobo store and I’ve yet to find a book that I want to purchase that Kobo doesn’t have. I frequently dump titles that none of my libraries have into my Kobo wishlist, and I was surprised to find that it had lesser-known books like This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik along with anticipated upcoming titles like How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix. 

If you live in the US, you’ve probably been fed the idea that Amazon’s Kindle book store is the most formidable on the web – and while that may be true, it’s not the only option available. Same goes for Kindles themselves: they may be the most ubiquitous e-readers, but if you’re even remotely interested in loosening the vice-grip Amazon has on your reading life, a Kobo device could do the trick.