Kindle may rule the eBook market but Amazon has been beaten by its main rival Kobo in the race to release an eReader with a colour screen. In fact, Kobo has doubled up and has today announced two brand new eReaders with colour displays, the Kobo Libra Colour and Kobo Clara Colour.

Until now, all Kindle and Kobo devices have used black and white E Ink screens. Though some other eReaders have hit stores in recent years with colour, it’s notable that these two new Kobos have finally made the jump.

The E Ink Kaleido 3 displays on both models means book covers can now be displayed in colour, while comic book and manga content will get a big visual boost by being able to be shown as its authors intended. The Libra Colour also has compatibility with Kobo’s Stylus 2, which allows you to draw or annotate directly onto eBook pages like you would in a real book – one better than on the Amazon Kindle Scribe, which uses digital sticky notes for annotations instead.

The Libra Colour has a 7-inch screen with an asymmetrical design and page turn buttons, while the Clara Colour has a 6-inch and is touchscreen only. They have very similar designs to the existing Libra 2 and Clara 2E Kobos.

Amazon recently discontinued its Kindle Oasis, the only Kindle model with page turn buttons. The firm currently sells the Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite with respective kids editions and a Signature version of the latter, plus the stylus-compatible Kindle Scribe. All have monochrome displays.

Kaleido™ 3

“We are pleased to be the first global ebook platform to offer affordable colour eReaders, bringing both your books and our bookstore to life with a beautiful spectrum of gentle hues. It’s everything you love about print, with all the benefits of eReading,” said Michael Tamblyn, CEO, Rakuten Kobo. “For Kobo, colour is a way of deepening and enriching the reading experience, while keeping the daylight readability and battery longevity that E Ink screens deliver so well.”

Kobo says both new colour eReaders are made from recycled and ocean-bound plastics, are waterproof, and have easier replaceable batteries, though it’s unclear if this can be done by customers or if Kobo sells spare batteries. We’ve asked the company to confirm. The Libra Colour has 32GB storage while the Clara Colour has 16GB, enough to store 24,000 or 12,000 eBooks respectively – enough for anyone, we hope!

Both eReaders also have Bluetooth so you can connect wireless headphones and listen to eBooks, and they both have integration with the excellent Overdrive app that lets you check out eBooks from your local library directly onto your Kobo. We have tried this and love it – you can’t do this with Kindle in the UK.

If you mainly read books with no pictures then you might not see the point in a colour screen eReader, but there’s no doubt it’s a notable evolution of the device category, which has largely been based around hardware with very similar screens.