The Kobo Libra Color and Clara Color are great color e-readers that stick in the back

The problem with most e-readers is that they aren’t really designed for reading books. They are supposed to sell you books. Amazon, which has the largest market share in the US, is particularly notable for doing this, but Barnes & Noble is guilty of the same thing. Kobo is perhaps the least offensive of these — it has Pocket and Overdrive integration! But every so often, when I find myself totally in love with Kobo’s gorgeous new color e-readers, I’m suddenly slapped with a reminder: this thing is here to sell me books.

Which is a shame, because Kobo’s new Libra Color and Clara Color are the closest we’ve gotten to a perfect e-reader lately. The $219.99 Libra Color and $149.99 Clara Color are ridiculously light, but with a sturdiness that makes them feel comfortable and not flimsy. Both feature Kaleido 3 displays, which means book covers are rendered in true color. Turn pages and browse stores much faster than the $249.99 Boox Page (the Palm’s larger, slower sibling)—impressive, given that the Kaleido 3’s display is quite a bit slower than the more traditional monochrome E Ink display on the Page .

I found myself liking the more expensive Libra because I prefer asymmetrical e-readers with dedicated buttons to ones that function more like traditional tablets. The advantage is also the support of the stylus for writing notes. Still, each is a charming and fun e-reader, and over the past few months I’ve repeatedly found myself reaching for the Libra over the box—which has been my primary e-reader until now. I just like the feeling of reading it more. Sure, the Boox gives me all the reading apps available (it’s an E Ink Android tablet), but the Libra doesn’t have any of the weird little hiccups typical of Android on E Ink.

Both Kobo eReaders also support color highlighting, and their touchscreens feel much snappier and more responsive than Boox’s. However, these accent colors aren’t particularly vibrant. The Kaleido 3 display you’ll find in both will give you color, but the color is similar to what you see on a newspaper that’s been left out in the sun for days. Additionally, this color comes at the expense of making the black-and-white reading experience a little less sharp. It’s still infinitely better than previous color E Ink technologies, which often gave the entire display a green tint.

My real issue with these devices isn’t the color display. That’s a lock.

Kobo e-readers feel more like they were made for buying books than reading them. They’re tied to the Kobo bookstore run by Rakuten, a Japanese retailer that’s often called the “Japanese Amazon” or “Japanese Barnes & Noble” when people want to quickly sum up the company. Rakuten is very good at moving books, and so is Kobo’s built-in bookstore. It doesn’t have quite the same library as Amazon; Amazon has more self-published books and carries more niche content from boutique publishers. Still, the Kobo bookstore has a decent expansion. If it’s a remotely popular book, you’ll find it on Kobo.

Unlike other non-Android eReaders, Kobo eReaders also have a more traditional library built in via Overdrive. If you have a library card that works with Overdrive, you can borrow e-books. Unfortunately, it’s at this point that you start to run into Kobo’s bookstore struggling with its e-reader business. To borrow books, you either have to use your phone to find them in an app like Libby, or you have to use the Discover tab, then select the Overdrive tab and hope you can find the book you want. Or you have to search for the book in the Kobo Store, and when you find the book, you have to click the More Options button next to the much larger Buy Now and Wishlist buttons, and then actually click the Borrow From Overdrive button to see if the book is available for loan at your library. It’s miserable, and when I asked a generally very smart friend to try to borrow the book, she couldn’t even figure out how.

You also can’t have more than one library card active on the Kobo at the same time. Instead, when you finish a book and want to read another book that’s linked to a different library card, you have to sign out and sign in with the other card. I had to repeatedly switch between my New York Public Library and Jersey City Public Library cards and was deeply annoyed. I don’t have to do this when I use the Libby app on my site or iPad.

You run into the same problem with the built-in “experimental” web browser that Kobo has. I can navigate websites just fine, and if I want to try reading a book over the web, I can theoretically do that. No app needed. Only the browser is painfully underdeveloped. It would be nice if I could scroll or page using Libra’s built-in buttons like I can with the EinkBro browser on Android e-readers.

Getting e-books from other stores onto the device is also a problem. You have to plug your e-book reader into your computer and drag and drop files (although Caliber, an e-book management app, makes this a lot easier). But this problem is not limited to Kobo. Amazon and Barnes & Noble also insist that you put books aside. But after years of the Boox (and iPad) ecosystem, it’s weird that all these systems insist you stick so close to their bookstore. It’s a degree of lock-in that seems absurd, and with Kobo’s ecosystem it’s more absurd because in many other ways it really does seem like the company is trying to do e-readers right.

The Kobo Libra Color and Koko Clara Color are fast and just about perfect for getting out of the way when you just want to read a book. Their color displays aren’t as sharp as the iPad Mini’s LED — or even the monochrome E Ink display — but color adds a welcome flavor to the experience that black and white can’t. The fact that they even offer things like a web browser and Overdrive and Pocket support is very welcome compared to what Amazon does. But the lock, man. Locking may be the norm in the e-reader world, but it shouldn’t be.