Skip to main content

Kobo Wireless eReaders drop to $99 at Best Buy

Kobo Wireless eReader
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Competition in the ereader market doesn’t seem to be subsiding: while some companies are now touting their ereaders as full-fledged tablet computers that can compete with the likes of the iPad, others continue to compete on another point that’s dear to consumers’ hearts: price. Kobo has just announced that the Onyx version of its Kobo Wireless eReader is now available from Best Buy locations in the United States at a special Mothers’ Day promotional price of $99. Customers can also take advantage of the promotional pricing via Best Buy’s Web site.

“We’ve seen great success working with Best Buy in Canada and look forward to being available in-store in the U.S. with the Mother’s Day special,” said Kobo’s VP of business development Todd Humphrey, in a statement. “Having Kobo’s Wireless eReader in Best Buy stores throughout the United States and online provides the eReading public with more purchasing options and allows shoppers to compare our eReader to the competition to see the value and versatility we bring to the table.”

The Kobo Wireless eReader sports a 6-inch E-Ink display with 16 levels of grey and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connectivity for browsing, buying, and downloading new book content to the device. The eReader comes with 100 free classic titles pre-installed, and has enough capacity to handle about 1,000 eBooks—make that 8,000 books with an optional SD memory card. The eReader can run for about 20 week or 10,000 page loads on a single battery charge. Users can shop the Kobo store. which offers over 2.3 million titles, including newspapers and magazines, as well as over 1 million free titles. The eReader supports ePUB, PDF, and Adobe DRM, and in many cases readers may be able to borrow eBooks from their local libraries for use on the Kobo eReader. And the eReader is just part of a larger Kobo ecosystem that includes apps for desktop computers and mobile devices.

Mothers’ Day is May 8 in the United States. After the Mothers’ Day promotion, the Kobo Wireless eReader will return to its normal suggested retail price of $129.99.

Editors' Recommendations

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Read more