Hands-on with Vox: The challenges and opportunities of being a digital media company

The Kobo Vox features a 7 inch capacitive multi-touchscreen display with a resolution of 1025600. The colors absolutely pop on this unit and the entire interface of the new apps the company released are optimized to fit the screen. Many of the apps, books, and menus maintained Landscape/Portrait orientations, but the main screen did not switch.

Things move fast with the 800 MHZ CPU processor and 512 MB of RAM. Scrolling through various menus was very snappy and apps seemed to load fairly quickly. I did notice graphics intensive books, such as graphic novels, comics, and PDF files sometimes took a while to load up. When they did load, page turn speed was fast.

Hands-on with Vox

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The front of the unit sports physical home touch panels for the standard Android fair. You have the options for Back, Settings, and Home. I like these sorts of buttons on the unit because frequently tablets are made to be purely software driven. If things start to slow down or crash altogether you have to physically reboot it. Some of the nagging problems are solved with physical buttons to press.

The back of the unit is fairly clean and simplistic. You are greeted with the standard quilted background that is popular with the Kobo Touch and WIFI. The quilt on the Vox honestly looks more polished and does not look cheap. It does not seem to be made of the same material as the ones found on the e-ink variants.

The Kobo Vox runs the Google Android 2.3 operating system and the GUI is not as evident as with the Nook Color. The user interface on on the Nook Color is heavily modified and if you were not a huge tech user, you would never even know it was Android. Honestly, I did not really notice any kind of unique GUI or UI at all, so Android users will feel right at home.

After all of the statistics are presented to you, there are a series of profile pictures. This would be your avatar found in your Facebook or Twitter account. You do have to connect with one of those social media services using the app to be able to comment and partake in the commenting. Speaking of commenting, users are given a very Youtube-esque commenting field. You can write a few brief lines of text and vote up/down peoples replies. This will ensure the best comments are ranked higher then trolls baiting people. Kobo told us that they are trying to get users to police themselves and that the moderation team would be very small. Likely the official Kobo moderators would only check out the most popular books or on a case by case basis if a number of users complain. The company also told us that they are making sure privacy concerns are being adhered to. There will be options to opt your profile out, so you would appear as a generic avatar and people who not have direct access to your social media account.

Your library has a standard shelf that has all of the books you have purchased and bookmarks appear on the ones you are currently reading. When you exit a book you can pick off exactly where you left off. There is also the ability to organize collections and even load in your own books with the MicroSD cable. The device natively reads EPUB files, but you can really load in any format you want with the 10,000 applications found with Getjar.

Applications are easy to install with Getjar. Kobo basically filtered a ton of bad apps or ones that did not look good on a seven inch screen. They organized them in a more intuitive way and gives you options to download and install. When we spoke with the CEO of Kobo he mentioned that it is very important to the company not to have a closed ecosystem. You have the ability to sideload in your own applications or alternative markets. There is no restrictions on what you can load on the device.

I checked out a few book that were loaded on the device and it supports full pinching and zooming on all of the kids books. Some of the books had hidden text on the page, so you had to pinch and zoom to find clues. Colors were really vibrant with the high resolution screen and the books looked great in portrait/landscape mode. Some of the books took a while to initially load, but once they did, page turn speed was very quick and there was no lag at all when you zoomed in and out.

As always, you have full access to all of the 2.3 million books that Kobo offers under their ecosystem. You can find popular bestsellers and on the front page a number of lists with a books that are popular at that time. Obviously, the Steve Jobs book was the number one seller already.

The reading experience overall is excellent! Kobo did a great job utilizing the full color screen for new content not previously offered. It feels like the Nook Color situation where they could present so many more options and really get kids into the reading aspect. I can see the Vox being very popular with parents who want to foster their love of reading with their little ones. Since the entire line of Kobo e-readers are internationally friendly, I think it has more reach with its kids line of books then the Nook Color does. I think this will eventually attract more publishers and independent authors to submit content. There is no word yet on how authors can submit their content directly to Kobo to be in their new sections of the store. Maybe Smashwords will come to the rescue and give new features to submit it.

There are some 3rd party applications installed by default on the device like Zinio, Rdio, and newspapers from Pressreader. Many other Android tablets come with some or all of these programs, but Kobo manages to give you content right away. Zinio is contributing 12 totally free, full featured magazines to get you into their stable of magazines. I use Zinio on my Apple iPad and there were tons of scrolling issues. Some magazines had you swipe down to continue the news item and some you had to scroll. It lacked in consistency which alienated some of the users that found the entire process convoluted. The magazines we checked out with the Zinio app on Kobo felt more refined. The other apps also give you a bunch of free content to get you in the door. If you want to take out subscriptions you can deal directly with them instead of going through Kobo.

The internet experience on this device was average and depending on your local wireless connection could warrant you some high speed. I found webpages loaded up reasonably quickly. I was able to watch embedded Youtube videos and Flash content. There were not a ton of settings with the default web browser other than bookmarking.

I had the Kobo Vox in my hands for about a solid hour and a half today and it is one of my favorite devices of the year. Kobo is a great company that is doing two things right; branching out internationally and developing social media. Living in Canada, sometimes we get the short end of the stick (same with Australia). Many companies simply focus on the USA market as a means to the end. It is expensive for new companies to compete in the USA market because of the expectations of low cost, high-end devices. Internationally, the quality of e-readers and tablets are overpriced and under performing. Considering Canada is a very high-tech nation, the only e-readers commonly available are Sony, Amazon Keyboard, Kobo, Pandigital, and Aluratek. In many cases, the newest models are not commonly available and most companies do not bother. Kobo is doing the right thing by focusing on markets often neglected by other companies. They have opened up markets in the last year with Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Germany, and Spain. They find retail partners to carry their devices and buy books directly from Kobo. They have special versions of their store in foreign language markets that puts the emphasis on homegrown authors and also independents.

The Kobo Vox is a dedicated reader first and foremost. The company has the competitive advantage of offering their own hardware and content distribution system. It allows you to freely participate in their ecosystem without locking you into it exclusively. I love the freedom associated with dealing with their hardware because I can use Adobe Digital Editions and just borrow books from the library or buy them via other stores.

Update 2: Many people have been asking about the new screen Kobo is using on their Vox. It is a AFFS display which is being billed as Anti-Glare! When we were in Toronto it was raining like crazy and we could not test it out in direct light. The one thing I can say is the screen pops, and I found it way better then resistive screens found in lower-end tablets. The big thing I noticed was that the resolution was tremendous and even with lots of overhead light there was little to no glare at all.

In addition to the $150 starter kit, which comes with 10 track pieces and two cars, Anki will sell add-on track pieces, which will cost between $10 and $30, and additional cars for $50 each. Some track sections, such as a four-way intersection and a jump ramp, will be sold separately only.

To start things off with the Vox Obscura Destiny 2 quest, you'll need to round out a couple of tries of the Psiops Battlegrounds mode in the H.E.L.M, and carry out a few steps at the War Table. These are the seasonal activities rather than actual campaign content, but should be highlighted in the H.E.L.M. whenever you go there.

For your build we'd recommend a Void subclass, with an emphasis on the Devour ability, so you can spam those grenades as much as possible - they'll be needed for the smaller groups of enemies. Check out our Destiny 2 Void 3.0 guide to see how the revamped subclass system works.

Things will become a bit heated, so be sure to make your tank last as long as possible, as it provides you with cover from the multitude of turrets surrounding the blast doors, which you must make your way through once the Signal Towers are down.

Next up you'll drop to an area with flame vents often blocking your path. A scout rifle or bow can be great for picking off some enemies from afar, but you'll want to focus on the room behind to start, where you will take out a Psion Commander, which in turn shields the Psion Codewarder. Try and be as swift as you can with the latter, as they are fast, and deal heavy amounts of damage. 2ff7e9595c