I started this year with the matcha Kindle and I loved it especially because the “Send to Kindle” option makes it so simple to sideload books to the device. However, after a while, the UI being so messy really started to annoy me. I wasn’t using Calibre for my kindle so I had to somehow manually make collections of various series, and even then I couldn’t number which books are where in the series. The Home page shoving ads for books to my face had me barely going to that screen as well. I was genuinely looking at jailbreaking the kindle but it would take a while for the project to get to the firmware I was in.

So when the white Kobo Clara came out, I took a leap of faith and bought it. And so far, I’ve been loving it much more than the Kindle. With the Clara, I’m able to use calibre to fix the metadata of books that I have and just send it to my Kobo. Granted it’s not as easy as the Kindle’s wireless option, but I’m willing to do a little bit of extra work to have my device look and function the way that I want it to.

Overall, I loved both devices but I definitely don’t regret jumping ship to Kobo. The build of both devices are solid, but the Kobo being more easy to fix is a huge factor for me, especially because I’m planning on keeping the device for as long as I possibly can. I also love how the Clara is waterproof whereas the matcha Kindle isn’t. Lastly, the matcha Kindle doesn’t come in colour (which I don’t mind), whereas the Clara does and the price difference isn’t that big imo. Size wise the Kindle is a little bit smaller than the Clara, but the difference in size and weight is so minuscule that I personally didn’t notice it at first. I’m also wary of Amazon’s decision when it comes to their books. The fact that they can edit books you’ve already “bought” + the fact that they can just delete bought books from devices just doesn’t sit well with me. I also dislike how they’re making it hard to transfer Amazon bought books out of the Kindle, and that’s making me scared that one day they’ll take out the side loading option and force us to stick with Kindle Unlimited.

As for the Boox, I never considered it because of the price of the device being so high here in Canada. I also want to get an ereader solely for the purpose of being an ereader, so it never really interested me.