Amazon may have launched the new Kindle Scribe for $399.99 earlier this month, but after testing it, I don’t think it can compete with its rivals just yet. If you’re looking for a great e-reader with more convenient note-taking features, the Kobo Elipsa 2E is still one of my favorites, and it’s down to an all-time low of $349.99 ($50 off) on Amazon or Target I am. Rakuten Kobo also gives you a $10 credit when you purchase a $50 gift card that you can use to purchase books or styluses.
If you’re the type of person who likes to doodle in the margins while reading e-books, you’ll probably prefer the Kobo Elipsa 2E. With Elipsa 2E, you can write directly on the pages of your ebook, take notes in the margins or anywhere else you like, just like you would on paper. The new Kindle Scribe also lets you write directly on the page, but it’s much more complex and doesn’t even allow you to circle phrases or words.
Besides a more natural note-taking experience, Elipsa 2E also offers other useful features. For example, it boasts twice the storage (32GB) of the entry-level Kindle Scribe and converts handwriting into typed text faster and more accurately than Scribe. The biggest drawback, of course, is that it doesn’t natively support Kindle e-books, so you’ll need to convert your library if you want to read them from your Kobo device.
