Kobo has quietly introduced a significant hardware iteration for the Libra Colour: it replaced its 1,600 mAh battery with a 2,300 mAh model that effectively addresses one of color e-ink’s largest pain points: battery life.
It’s a one-thing-changed update, but for readers who split their time between comics, PDFs, and audiobooks, more days off the charger are the upgrade that matters most.
A Bigger Battery and Benefits Every Day
That capacity bump, reported by Good e-Reader and also reflected in company materials, should translate to significantly longer times before you go red. Depending on how bright you keep the light, how often the page refreshes, and whether you use Bluetooth, that can amount to several more days of reading—in most cases, nearly a week more—between top-offs.
Unlike OLED or LCD displays, e-ink uses most power when refreshing and less while displaying static text. But color screens generally depend more on the front light, and Bluetooth playback makes for steady drain. It doesn’t affect how you read; a bigger pack just fades the battery icon into oblivion.
What Hasn’t Changed on the Updated Kobo Libra Colour
The rest of the Libra Colour is also similar, and broadly good news. You will still have a 7-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 panel that can display crisp 300 ppi monochrome text and 150 ppi color for illustrated content. Stylus input is compatible with margin notes and PDF markups, Bluetooth does audiobooks, and the asymmetrical chassis with page-turn buttons makes one-handed reading a cinch.
Kobo is still pushing its sustainability story as well, with recycled and ocean-bound plastics worked into the build. There are no changes to processor, storage, or display with this battery swap anyway, so if you liked the Libra Colour’s ergonomics and feature set in the past, that experience remains unchanged—only now it’s less encumbered by wires.
Why Endurance Matters for Colour E Ink Devices
Color e-ink has advanced quickly, but there are still trade-offs compared with grayscale. The color filter array on Kaleido sucks a lot of reflectance, so readers typically bump the front light a couple of levels higher for magazines, web articles, and manga. More light, plus more frequent partial refreshes—such as image-heavy content that isn’t fully re-rendered when scrolling back upwards—cuts into run time.
E Ink Corporation’s Kaleido 3 improves color purity and contrast compared to previous generations, increasing legibility without sacrificing the fundamental e-ink benefits of daylight clarity and low-power page holds. Combining those gains with a larger battery is the sort of practical approach that makes color viable for novel-first readers who sometimes dabble in graphics-heavy titles.
Competitive Context for Kobo’s Updated Libra Colour
The upgrade also positions Kobo more clearly in a growing niche. Amazon has yet to bring color to Kindle, letting fans of color turn elsewhere (notably Kobo, PocketBook, and Onyx). In that field, stamina is a differentiator—particularly if you count users who are mixing ebooks with library loans and comics and annotation-heavy PDFs.
This shift suits Kobo’s overall ecosystem well. Built-in OverDrive integration makes borrowing a breeze, and with the rise of Bluetooth audio, at least some readers never even pop open the screen during commuting hours. A bigger battery makes that hybrid reading and listening behavior more sustainable without having to recharge in the middle of the week.
How the Battery Upgrade Affects Kobo Libra Colour Buyers
If you’ve been on the fence about color e-ink because of battery anxiety, this refresh makes the Libra Colour easier to endorse. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it removes an objection you might have been raising and it nudges color closer to “set and forget.” It’s not a compelling reason to upgrade if you already own the current edition; it’s the version to get if you’re starting fresh.
As small as it sounds on a spec sheet, a bigger battery, in my experience, just about always has the most meaningful impact on how a reader feels day to day. With the Libra Colour, that presence should be felt in chapters read, pages turned, and audiobooks completed — not in time spent hunting for a USB-C cable.
