Ahead of next week’s Prime Day, we’re already seeing a ton of deals on Amazon devices like the Kindle Scribe, which makes sense since it’s an Amazon event. We may be seeing more Kindle deals soon, but we’re not quite sure what kind of discounts, if any, we’ll see on rival e-readers like Kobo. Thankfully, if you don’t need an Amazon e-reader, Rakuten Kobo is dropping its top-tier product with a new promotion Kobo Elipsa 2E The price is down to an all-time low of $349.99 (a $50 savings) when you buy directly from Rakuten Kobo. You can also buy it through third-party sellers on Amazon or Target for the same price.
I spent a lot of time testing the Kindle Scribe and the Kobo Elipsa 2E, and the Kobo ended up being my favorite large-screen e-book reader for note-taking. For one, you can actually write directly on any page, resulting in a more intuitive note-taking experience, whereas Scribe only lets you annotate selected Kindle titles directly. Additionally, it accurately converts handwriting to typed text when you export your notebook, and, unlike Scribe, as you write within notebook. This ad-free e-reader has twice the storage (32GB) of the entry-level Kindle Scribe and comes with a variety of pen styles (and colors) to choose from.
The main drawback is that Elipsa 2E does not natively support Kindle books, although it does support many other file formats (EPUB, EPUB3, CBZ, FlePub, etc.). Plus, if you’re willing to invest some extra time and effort, there are ways to convert your collection so you can still read your Kindle library from Kobo.
