Kobo Libra Colour Falls to $229.99 at Best Buy, Target, and Rakuten Kobo After Price Hike
Rakuten Kobo's Libra Colour e-reader is back at $229.99 across Best Buy, Target, and Rakuten Kobo's own storefront, effectively wiping out a recent price increase that had pushed the device to $259.99. At $30 off the…
Key takeaways
- The Kobo Libra Colour is priced at $229.99 at Best Buy, Target, and Rakuten Kobo, reversing a recent increase that had raised it to $259.99.
- The $229.99 price is $30 off the current $259.99 list price and $20 below Amazon's comparable Kindle Colorsoft at $249.99.
- The Libra Colour features a seven-inch color display, 32GB storage (double the Kindle Colorsoft), physical page-turning buttons, waterproofing, and adjustable warm lighting.
- The optional Kobo Stylus 2 adds handwritten annotation, notebook templates, and handwriting-to-text conversion, capabilities the Kindle Colorsoft lacks at its price point.
- The Libra Colour supports EPUB and a broader range of document formats and connects with Instapaper for offline reading of saved web articles.
Rakuten Kobo's Libra Colour e-reader is back at $229.99 across Best Buy, Target, and Rakuten Kobo's own storefront, effectively wiping out a recent price increase that had pushed the device to $259.99. At $30 off the current list price, the deal also positions the Libra Colour $20 below Amazon's comparable Kindle Colorsoft, which carries a $249.99 price tag.
A $30 Reversal on Kobo's Color E-Reader
Kobo's move to $259.99 had compressed the value argument against the Kindle Colorsoft, briefly making the Libra Colour the more expensive option between the two. The concurrent promotion running simultaneously across all three retailers restores the prior $229.99 price point — and the competitive margin over the Amazon device. For readers not anchored to Amazon's ecosystem, the math now tilts clearly toward Kobo.
Feature-for-Feature Against the Kindle Colorsoft
The Kobo Libra Colour is built around a seven-inch color display that renders book covers, comics, and reading highlights with slightly less vibrancy than the Kindle Colorsoft's panel — a real but marginal gap. Both devices offer waterproofing and adjustable warm lighting suited to nighttime reading.
The Libra Colour's differentiators are concrete. Storage lands at 32GB, double what the Kindle Colorsoft provides. The device ships with physical page-turning buttons that the Colorsoft omits, delivering a more tactile reading experience. File format support extends to EPUB and a broader range of document types, reducing the format dependency that keeps Kindle users inside Amazon's content store.
Stylus Add-On and Note-Taking Capability
The optional Kobo Stylus 2 adds handwritten annotation on ebooks, built-in notebook templates, and handwriting-to-text conversion — capabilities the Kindle Colorsoft does not offer at its price point. Kobo positions larger devices, its own Kobo Elipsa 2E and Amazon's Kindle Scribe, as the more capable dedicated digital notebooks given their screen size. At the seven-inch form factor, though, the stylus integration makes the Libra Colour a practical option for quick notes and ebook annotation in a way that a phone cannot match. The device also connects with Instapaper, enabling offline reading of saved web articles.
Where to Find the Deal
Best Buy, Target, and Rakuten Kobo are each listing the Kobo Libra Colour at $229.99, against a current standard price of $259.99.