Kobo Forma Vs Amazon Kindle Oasis: Which One is Great for Reading?

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The Kobo Forma and Amazon Kindle Oasis are compared here. Here, you will get a detailed review of both the E-readers and the comparison between them and you can easily decide which one is better for you through this review.

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Kobo FormaAmazon Kindle Oasis
BUY NOWBUY NOW
PROSPROS
8-inch touchscreen.
Waterproof.
Vertical and horizontal orientation supported.
Lightweight and comfortable to hold.
Adjustable front-light color.
New color-adjustable front light lets you cool or warm the lighting.
Waterproof.
Light weight and sharp text makes it comfortable to read for hours.
CONSCONS
Shadows from the front light.
Expensive.
Can only play audiobooks from Audible.
Expensive.

SPECIFICATIONS:

MODELKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
BrandKoboAmazon
ModelFormaKindle Oasis
DISPLAYKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
Screen Size8 inch7″ glare-free
TechnologyE Ink CartaE Ink Carta
Pixel Density300 PPI300 PPI
MISCELLANEOUSKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
FeaturesComfortLight PRO, water-resistant25 LEDs, IPX8 waterproof, flush-front design, optimized font technology
ColorBlackGraphite, Champagne gold
MEMORYKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
Storage8 or 32 GB8 or 32 GB
E-BOOK READERKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
Supported Text FormatsCBR, CBZ, EPUB, EPUB3, HTML, MOBI, PDF, RTF, TXTAZW, AZW3, DOC, DOCX, HTML, MOBI, PDF, PRC (Mobipocket), TXT
Supported Still Image FormatsBMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFFBMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG
Features11 different fonts, 50 font styles, font weight and sharpness settingsPage Flip, built-in LED reading light, Page turn buttons, rotating orientation
CONNECTIVITYKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
ConnectivityWiFi 802.11b/g/n, 1T1R and Micro USBWi-Fi or Wi-Fi + Free Cellular Connectivity
DIMENSIONS & WEIGHTKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
Width6.3 in5.6 in
Depth0.3 in0.3 in
Height7 in6.3 in
Weight6.9 oz6.6 oz
POWERKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
Battery LifeWeeks of battery life2 month
Recharge Time3 hours
FEATURESKOBO FORMAAMAZON KINDLE OASIS
FeaturesWith an ergonomic curved design, and lightweight enough to hold for hours, Kobo Forma is our most comfortable E-reader yet.

Whether you’re right-handed or a lefty, try Kobo Forma’s new page-turn buttons to move through your story. Read in portrait or landscape mode, or set the text to automatically change orientation depending how you hold your E-reader.

Kobo Forma immerses you in your reading more than ever before, with a sturdy 8.0” HD Mobius Carta E Ink screen that feels lighter than air.

Kobo Forma is fully waterproof from the inside out with HZO Protection™ and safe for the beach, the pool, or a soak in the tub.

Connect to your local public library right from Kobo Forma with built-in OverDrive. Search for the eBooks you want and choose to borrow or buy — it’s that simple.
The most advanced Kindle ever.

Customize your screen, adjust the screen’s shade from white to amber to personalize your reading experience.

You can read anywhere.

Waterproof (IPX8) so you can read in the bath or by the pool.

Massive selection of books, instant access to millions of books, newspapers, and audiobooks.

Works with Audible – pair with Bluetooth headphones or speakers to switch seamlessly between reading and listening.

Detailed Review

INTRODUCTION:

Kobo Forma

The Kobo Forma is made inspired by the Kindle Oasis but there are some different features and differences between Kindle Oasis and Kobo Forma. This one has almost every feature that Kindle Oasis had.

Amazon Kindle Oasis

The Kindle Oasis is the highest of the three models starting at $249. Amazon sells the Oasis in a few different tiers, the very basic 249 model actually has something called special offers and that’s their code way of saying that when your Kindle is in sleep mode, it will have ads on the screensaver, and if you don’t want to have the ads, you have to buy the Kindle version without special offers which start at $269. There’s no difference in functionality between the two models besides the fact that you’ll be seeing ads when your Kindle is in sleep mode.

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DESIGN:

Kobo Forma

The design of this Kobo Forma is almost like the Kindle Oasis. The build quality is also good and it is waterproof. So, you can read near any water-based places. To hold the E-reader is also nice and comfortable. The large 8-inch screen will give you a great view to read but the only con in this is that you can’t carry it in your pocket but it will easily fit in your bag.   

Amazon Kindle Oasis

The reason why you have to choose the Oasis model is because of the high build quality. It has a metal casing whereas the other Kindle models are all plastic. A metal casing just makes it feel so much nicer to hold but you pay for that extra build quality, so the price is higher because of that.

In terms of design, the Kindle Oasis is very minimal. On top of the Kindle, you’ll see a power button for sleeping and waking. On the front are two-page turn buttons that are exclusive to the Oasis model and the bottom of the Kindle is a charging port with a micro USB port and it has also a little LED light if it’s charging or the battery’s dead.

It may take some time to get comfortable with the Oasis because of its different design but it’s purposely made for easy holding, so after some time of use you will get used to it and that design will be beneficial to you. Definitely, it will take some time to get used to holding, it’s a very interesting design of the hump.

DISPLAY:

Kobo Forma

The UI and home screen are basically the same as previous iterations but it has gotten an overhaul in a different sense and that is the screen size and the resolution.

The Kobo Forma does have a lot of Blues in the screen, they’re not necessarily blue LEDs they’re just whiter LEDs. Now, there is a way to rectify this and it’s a very nice way as well, you can see it has a natural light which allows you to choose orange or red tones to your lighting needs but unlike some E-readers that have two rows of LEDs that either go on when they’re blue or on when they’re orange, you can actually turn all of them on at the same time by anything in the middle of the sunlight or the moon. So, you can actually choose a very nice pure kind of stone white color and this comes in handy because not only is the light distribution perfect, you can actually do your own white balancing. If you swipe down on the left side of the screen up or down, you can change the light levels without even going to the menu.

Amazon Kindle Oasis

One of the best things about the Kindle Oasis is a 7-inch anti-glare display. This is a full one inch bigger than both the Kindle Paperwhite and the regular Kindle. Just like the paperwhite model, this Kindle also has a 300 PPI screen which means the text is super clean and crisp to read. It’s a really nice HD screen but one thing that makes stand apart from the other models is the lighting features inside the kindle display.

The Oasis model has 25 LEDs for backlight whereas the Paperwhite model only has 5 and the basic Kindle only has 4. So, right away you see a big difference in lighting here for the backlight display. This model also has ambient light sensors, so it actually adjusts the lighting automatically for you.

Another unique feature to the Oasis model here is the first Kindle it has the built-in adjustable warm lighting. Just like your phone, if you use the night shift feature on your phone display settings the sunrise and sunset, the display will come a little orange tint to it, it’s a little easier on the eyes and this Kindle supports that too. So, it was automatically built-in, you have to set for sunrise and sunset. This one small feature that I really really appreciate, it’s all automatic. If you find that to be useful when you’re reading at night, this is a must-have feature for that.

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FEATURES:

Kobo Forma

If you tap the top corner of the E-reader, you will have a list of things, you have my books related reads bar by borrow or preview books down below, articles from the pocket, the books that you’re currently reading. You have all the brightness, Wi-Fi, battery, syncing, and search settings up at the top. When you’re in the search, you can actually search for anything anywhere on both the store, overdrive, your own books annotations dictionary, and more.

Looking at your library or ‘my books’ is where you’re going to spend most of your time before you get into the books. So, you have things like filters that filter all reading previews downloaded to really give you a sense of organizing and organized by title author series file type. You have little three dots that give you some more information like cover view, manage books, that actually send you to the cover view, so it’s like you’re looking at a bookshelf. You also have authors and you have collections and this is very easy all you do is create a collection and just say books obviously, you’ll come up with something more imaginative, then you can simply just add the books to your collection. Under your book collection, you will have all of the titles you have added. Another nice feature is being able to long-press on something and this gives you the ability to read now, view details, add to the collection, mark as unread, mark as finished, and remove.

If you tap on the center of the screen, you get some information like home, search, table of contents which works very well, you can just whip over to something anytime you want. You get reading settings, this allows you to invert the physical page turn buttons, choose the on-screen controls, and some technical stuff. You also have some reading statistics and this is really cool because you get some graphs of how many chapters, hours left to go next chapter, minutes to go percentage of red, and you have related reads which connect you to the Kobo store. Clicking on the three dots gives you a list of annotations, write a review, dictionary, reading settings, etc.

You can change the font size, the line spacing, the margin, everything changes live, you even have advanced. Advanced is really nice because you can choose a before and after of what you want your book to look like, you click apply and it applies it to the entire book. We also have justification left centered and off. If we long-press on some text or line, you get some information that will give you highlight to add a note, this will give you in book Wikipedia Google and you have Facebook as well. You have the English dictionary and all the other dictionary on the menu.

Unlike the Kindle Oasis, the Kobo Forma has the ability to not only flip portrait wise but can actually flip landscape as well and no other E-Reader really does this, outside of using third-party applications on some open Android devices but this is pretty fantastic. You might be thinking that could be annoying but they have both a portrait and landscape lock, this doesn’t entirely lock the gyroscope because you can still switch between portrait or landscape respectively but not when you lock the screen. Articles from the pocket are also very useful and very easy to use. You can also just add an ebook and audio thumbnail and you’re able to read the article and then you can open a browser to extend your reading pleasure by jumping straight to the article that you had saved.

This has a pin lock on it and a lot of people always ask if an e-reader has a pin lock. So, the Kobo format does and outside of Android E-readers, this is not on all devices.

Amazon Kindle Oasis

The cool thing about the Kindle Oasis is that there’s a built-in accelerometer. It means you can actually hold the Kindle in either hand and the screen will rotate automatically for you. For whatever reason though, you can’t change it to the horizontal position automatically but you can do it in the settings. So, if you hold it left or right, it’ll flip the screen by itself automatically but if you want to hold it in the horizontal position, you have to change the orientation in the settings.

The unique thing about the Oasis model is the page turn buttons. Also, you will really enjoy the touchscreen for page-turning as well. The one benefit of having buttons here is there’s a feature on the Oasis here where you can lock the touchscreen, so if you want to hold the Kindle in a unique way with your thumb on the touchscreen and you don’t want to accidentally change pages, you can lock the whole touchscreen while you’re reading and use the button to turn pages.

One cool thing that I found is if you travel a lot, Amazon sells a version of the Oasis that has cellular connectivity built-in and it’s basically if you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection, you can still have the ability to download ebooks if you purchase this model, it does cost $349. It’s really great for people who travel a lot, no worrying about Wi-Fi or anything like that. There are also two different storage capacities to choose from 8 gigabytes and 32 gigabytes and most people will be fine with eight GB. This is enough to hold thousands of books on your Kindle but the only difference really comes into play is for audiobooks, the 8-gigabyte model is only able to hold up to 35 audiobooks whereas 32 GB will hold over 160 audiobooks, so just keep that in mind if you’re an audiobook person.

The screen saver on the Kindle is very interesting, every time you lock the Kindle, it will display a nice little clean image of some sort. They say that they don’t take up any battery life.

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PERFORMANCE:

Kobo Forma

Borrowing from your library is super easy, you can easily connect to the library nearby you. You can basically just click on anything and instead of buying it or previewing now, the three dots over here allows you to borrow it with overdrive. It does simply connects to the overdrive server and you’ve checked it out and within ten seconds, you’ve actually borrowed and downloaded the book and start reading away. So, this is a good way to get a lot of value out of this without always having to buy.

In terms of the experience, you can also change pages three ways swiping, tapping, or pressing the physical page turn buttons and they actually use this from their Kobo aura 132-gigabyte limited edition in the sense where you can whip through book lightning speed and nothing flashes or refreshes until you finally let go all the staining goes away and you’re left with the perfect image.

Amazon Kindle Oasis

This device is very straightforward. You just choose your language, connect to Wi-Fi, and also log in to your Amazon account and one pleasant surprise was typing on the on-screen keyboard was actually very pleasant. It was just like typing on an iPad or an iPhone, there is a slight difference in terms of lag but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad. If you’re getting a Kindle, I strongly suggest that you go into the settings and play around with a few of the preferences. It’s very cleanly laid out, you could probably figure out a lot of it.

Here, you are paying a premium for a higher-end Kindle version but in return, you are getting a lot of value. You’re getting a high-quality build in the casing of the Kindle, you’re getting a larger display, a brighter display, a warm light adjustable screen, the ambient sensors, the accelerometer for rotation, and the page turn button. So, for all those features that add up to much nicer user experience.

This device reads manga exceptionally well, it given the size of the screen, it’s almost the exact same as you holding an actual manga in your hand. They also have from their Kobo aura one limited edition, the quick page turns speed which actually just whizzes through the book at lightning speeds and doesn’t dilute the image a whole lot, so you can actually still see what’s going on, it does take a second to render but once it does. you’re totally in the clear.

The store experience again is more of the same. You will have a collection of recommended books, you can click on something and it leads you to the book itself, you can do a preview now and you can press the three dots to borrow with overdrive if it is available in your local library and you can see that, unlike the Kindle where everything is on one column.

BATTERY:

Kobo Forma

The battery life of this Kobo Forma is also nice. Like all the good branded E-readers, this one also has a good battery life. If you charge on full, it will survive about weeks as per your reading time per day. In this E-reader also, they use Micro USB for charging instead of a USB-C cable.

Amazon Kindle Oasis

In terms of battery life, the Kindle battery life has actually been really great for me. If you’re a regular reader, it will last a full week so far without charging it and it does let you know when the battery is low and you can charge it back up with your computer if you want to through USB in about an hour or so. So, it was really nice, it charges up pretty quickly. A quick tip is if you turn airplane mode on and turn the Wi-Fi off, it’ll last you even longer.

My biggest complaint about this Kindle is the fact that it uses a micro USB connector. This new Kindle is released in 2020, anything from nowadays should have a USB-C connection, you’ll have to use a micro USB cable to charge your Kindle.

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WHICH TO BUY?

Both the E-readers are high-end most customizable devices for reading and the price is also almost the same. So, according to the features you have to decide which one you want for yourself. In my opinion, both devices are great to buy to get a wonderful reading experience.

Expert Reviews of Kobo Forma:

By Lifewire
If you want to take e-reading up a notch, the Kobo Forma is worth considering.The Kobo Forma is a solid e-reader with an upscale sensibility. It’s not packed with the many extras that Amazon Kindle e-readers throw into the mix, but the features it…

By Expertreviews
Amazon’s Kindle Oasis faces fierce competition from Kobo’s latest luxury ebook…

By PC World
There’s a tug-of-war behind the design of every device you own. Companies strive to find the right balance of size, weight and features based on market research and what’s worked well for them in the past. Rakuten Kobo’s done well with large-format…

By Goodhousekeeping
A large but lightweight e-reader thats simple to use. It comes with some handy extra features like blue light level adjustments. It’s waterproof and can withstand drops from up to two feet too! It is expensive and regular readers will get the most from…

By Trusted Reviews
A few decent features aren’t enough to justify the Kobo Forma’s steep…

Expert Reviews of Amazon Kindle Oasis:

By Indiatoday
In one word: Yes. The Amazon Kindle Oasis, as I said before, is the best Kindle in the market that money can buy. It comes with a well-lit display that is comfortable to read under all light conditions. It is immune to water and it has all the features…

By PCWorld
The All-New Kindle Oasis is well-built and a pleasure to read on. It’s well-worth the expense for serious readers…

By Gadgetsnow.com
The new Amazon Kindle Oasis is a sturdy lightweight device and is splashproof too. Battery is no big issue on this e-reader and a single charge could make it run for a week or so easily if you are a very heavy reader and devote almost 5-6 hours on a…

By WCCFTech
The Kindle Oasis is a fantastic piece of hardware, by far the best e-reader on the market with an excellent 7-inch e-ink display and sturdy aluminium back & frame that just feels like quality. There are still one or two downsides, with the lack of…

By Cnet
The Paperwhite remains the better overall value, but the updated Kindle Oasis secures its position as the best e-reader if price is no object.