<p>What was once a potential Kindle-killer is now playing catch-up.</p>

- Seamus Bellamy

Rakuten Kobo’s latest e-reader, the Kobo Aura One Limited Edition, looks identical to the year-old Kobo Aura One. But with 32GB of storage and a few new software tricks up its sleeve, it’s designed to go blow for-blow with Amazon’s outstanding 2017 Kindle Oasis (go.pcworld.com/knos). While it isn’t quite up to the task, it still has a lot to offer certain readers.

PRICING, SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

The Kobo Aura One Limited Edition’s not cheap. At $280 from Rakuten Kobo (go. pcworld.com/rako), it costs as much as Amazon’s 32GB Kindle Oasis with “Special Offers” (ads at the bottom of the screen) and $50 more than Kobo’s original Aura One. Those willing to pay the premium will be rewarded with 32GB of storage, four times the amount that the original Aura One provides.

For readers of traditional ebooks, this is overkill—8GB of storage can already hold thousands of titles. However, if your reading branches out to PDFs, digital comic books, manga, or other large files, a huge bump in storage like this could be a compelling upgrade.

Don’t get carried away, though. Electronic readers tend to be low-powered devices, lasting weeks off a single charge. Performance takes a back seat as a result, and it shows in how most e-readers struggle to compile larger catalogs. Whenever I’ve tried to load all 2,400 ebooks in my personal collection onto any of the e-readers I’ve tested or owned, the device has crashed or slowed down to the point of bein

This story is from the February 2018 edition of PCWorld.

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