Kobo Clara Colour: Specs, Price, Pros & Cons
Kobo publishes the figure that undercuts this reader's name. Its Kaleido 3 panel shows black-and-white text at 300 ppi and color at 150 ppi. Prose looks as sharp as on a monochrome reader, and cover art, comic panels and color-coded notes are drawn on a grid half as fine.
It is Kobo's smallest color reader, built in the same body as the Clara BW. The IPX8 rating covers an hour in two meters of water, the USB-C port charges it, and ComfortLight PRO warms the front light for evening reading. Libby borrowing from a public library runs on the device. EPUB opens without conversion, and so do the CBZ and CBR files most digital comics come in, which matters on the one Clara that can show their color.
Kobo gives it a dual-core 2.0 GHz processor, against the single 1.0 GHz figure it lists for the Clara BW. The panel uses FastGLR, Kobo's name for a refresh method that cuts the ghosting left behind when a page changes.
There are no physical page-turn buttons, because Kobo keeps those for the Libra Colour and the Sage, so every page is a tap on the glass. There is no stylus support, no memory card slot and, by Kobo's comparison table, no Dropbox or Google Drive connection. Audiobooks play only through Bluetooth headphones or a speaker, because the reader has neither a speaker nor a headphone socket.
Category strengths
Where the Kobo Clara Colour beats the median
- Has color display ?
- Has waterproof ?
Where the Kobo Clara Colour trails the median
- No page-turn buttons ?
- Much less storage ?16 GB vs 32 GB (median)
- A thicker body ?9.2 mm vs 7.2 mm (median)
- No stylus support ?
- Lower resolution ?1,448 px vs 1,648 px (median)
- A slightly smaller screen ?6" (15.24 cm) vs 6.13" (15.57 cm) (median)
How this VS Score was computed
Score 50: each known spec is measured against the median of all e-readers (14 products), then weighted. 49% of the scoreable weight could be used. See how we score
| Specification | This product | Cohort median | Score weight | Points moved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waterproof | Yes | 50% of the class have it | 1 | +50.0 |
| Color display | Yes | 43% of the class have it | 0.5 | +25.0 |
| Page-turn buttons | No | 57% of the class have it | 0.5 | −24.0 |
| Internal storage | 16 | 32 | 0.5 | −12.5 |
| Stylus support | No | 50% of the class have it | 0.25 | −12.0 |
| Cellular | No | 21% of the class have it | 0.2 | −9.6 |
| Speakers | No | 33% of the class have it | 0.2 | −9.6 |
| Thickness | 9.2 | 7.2 | 0.5 | −5.5 |
| Screen size | 6 | 6.13 | 1 | −1.0 |
| Pixel density | 300 | 300 | 2 | +0.0 |
| Battery life (weeks) | 6 | 6 | 1.5 | +0.0 |
| Weight | 174 | 174 | 2 | +0.0 |
Not scored: Resolution (one resolution dimension is not a sharpness measure; pixel density is scored instead); Front light (standard for the class (100% have it)); Adjustable warm light (standard for the class (86% have it)); Auto-brightness (unknown: not scored); Flush screen (unknown: not scored); Dark mode (standard for the class (100% have it)); Touchscreen (standard for the class (100% have it)); EPUB support (standard for the class (86% have it)); Audiobook support (standard for the class (100% have it)); Text-to-speech (unknown: not scored); Library lending (standard for the class (100% have it)); Cloud sync (unknown: not scored); App store (unknown: not scored); Expandable storage (microSD) (unknown: not scored); RAM (unknown: not scored); Battery capacity (unknown: not scored); Charge time (unknown: not scored); USB-C (standard for the class (100% have it)); Wireless charging (unknown: not scored); Bluetooth (standard for the class (100% have it)); 3.5mm headphone jack (not applicable: only 0% of this class have it).
Editor’s note
Color helps in study material and comics, where a highlight can carry meaning, a diagram can separate its parts and a manga cover looks the way the artist drew it. Kaleido color is muted, so the improvement is that color is there at all.
On this screen a standard US comic page shows at under half its printed size, and a manga volume page at about two thirds. Manga survives that. Western comics with dense lettering mostly need zooming, and the Libra Colour's 7-inch page helps only a little.
Kobo fits a 1,900 mAh cell in the white Clara Colour and a 1,500 mAh cell in the black one. It then gives both the same 42-day rating at half an hour a day with the light at 30 percent. Nothing Kobo publishes says what the white unit's larger battery buys, so treat the colorway as a choice of looks until someone measures both.
For a library of novels I'd point people to the Clara BW instead. This filter takes light and contrast from every page, colored or not, and a reader who never opens a picture pays that cost for nothing.
Amazon's 2026 Colorsoft, a 7-inch color reader, has a Best Buy release date of October 28.
Specifications
Display
Reading
Storage & performance
Battery
Connectivity
Design
Sources and verification
Where the specifications come from
- Official product pageus.kobobooks.com
Verification
- First published
- Specifications last checked
- Sheet completeness
- 28 of 39 specifications verified; the rest show as Unknown and are never estimated or scored
- Page type
- Product specification page — Compiled from the manufacturer’s published specifications and the cited sources; this is not a hands-on test.
- Basis
- Research-based: specifications and editorial text were compiled from the documents listed here and the manufacturer’s published data. We have not tested this unit ourselves; where independent measurements are mentioned they belong to the linked publication.
Where to buy
Prices and availability may change. Check the retailer before buying. We may earn a commission on purchases.
Price history
E-Readers with similar specs to the Kobo Clara Colour
Ratings & reviews
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The bottom line
The Kobo Clara Colour earns a VS Score of 50, level with the median of the 14 e-readers it is measured against.
- Who it’s for
- Someone who reads manga, illustrated non-fiction or color-coded study material and wants the smallest waterproof Kobo that can show them in color.
- Who should look elsewhere
- Anyone whose reading is plain prose: the Clara BW is the better buy for that. Look elsewhere too if you want to write on the page, since only Kobo's larger models take a stylus.
- The trade-off that matters
- You accept a slightly dimmer, lower-contrast page all the time in exchange for color some of the time.
- The main alternative
- Kobo Libra Colour, if one-handed reading matters to you: the same color panel on a larger screen, with the physical page-turn buttons this model leaves out.
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