I was excited when the Kobo Elipsa was announced two years ago, as it was the first e-note tablet from a company known for excellent e-readers and a sizable ebook store accessible right from the device. I, unfortunately, was left disappointed with the original Elipsa, but the recently announced Elipsa 2E feels like a do-over for Kobo, delivering a much improved e-note device that also doubles as an excellent, super-sized e-reader.
Both the Elipsa and the Elipsa 2E share a very similar design, making them hard to distinguish just by looking at them. Most of the improvements are under the hood or have to do with the stylus. So instead of reviewing the Elipsa 2E from scratch (I encourage you to read my review of the original Kobo Elipsa first), I’m going to delve into its welcomed upgrades, but also address where I think there’s still room for improvement.
Two Small Elipsa Design Changes That Make a Big Difference
If you’re using a device with a folio style case that automatically wakes it when you open the lid, its power/sleep/wake button is more or less irrelevant until you want to completely turn it off. Most of the time, I prefer to use e-readers and e-notes without the added bulk of a case, which means I’m often reaching for that button, and on the original Kobo Elipsa, it sat flush on the edge of the device and was often hard to find by feel alone.
On the Kobo Elipsa 2E, the power/sleep/wake has been simply upgraded with four bumps, making it incredibly easy to find by just sliding your finger along its side edge.
The other welcome upgrade, more useful to those who also plan to use the Elipsa 2E as an e-reader held in one hand, is the tablet’s back panel. The original Elipsa featured a rubberized surface, but with a smooth surface that limited grip, and collected greasy fingerprints. The back panel on the Elipsa 2E feels like it’s made from the same rubbery material, but is now finished with a textured pattern that’s easier to hold on to, while also making helping to hide fingerprints.
One thing still missing from the Elipsa 2E, however, are physical page turn buttons. I don’t think devices like reMarkable 2, which is first and foremost a note-taking device, need them, but the Elipsa 2E also doubles as an excellent e-reader, and I personally find physical buttons a better alternative to tapping the screen to turn pages.
The Elipsa 2E’s Screen Can Do Warm Light
One of the most compelling reasons to choose the original Kobo Elipsa over other e-notes available at the time, including the reMarkable 2, was that it came with direct access to Kobo’s online ebook store, which is stocked with over 1.3 million titles available for purchase. It worked well as both an e-note device and a large screen e-reader, but lacked Kobo’s ComfortLight PRO technology for making color temperature adjustments on the screen’s lighting.
The jury is still out on whether looking at screens with cooler, blue-ish toned glowing screens will actually hinder your ability to fall asleep when you need to, but many users do find warmer tones easier on the eyes when using electronic devices after dark, and the ability to adjust the warmth of the Elipsa 2E’s screen is easily its biggest selling point.
Unfortunately, two years after the original Elipsa debuted, the Kobo Elipsa 2E arrives to some stiffer competition, specifically from Amazon, whose Kindle Scribe features a 10.2-inch, 300 PPI E Ink screen that’s still exclusive to its devices.
So, the Kobo Elipsa 2E arrives with the same 10.3-inch, 227 PPI E Ink Carta 1200 electronic paper screen as the original did, two years ago. It’s starting to feel a little dated next to the Kindle Scribe’s 300 PPI screen, and the 300 PPI screens on Kobo’s own e-readers like the Forma. I don’t think it’s necessarily a deal breaker because the size of the screen means you can boost the font size of text and make jagged edges less obvious, but they’re definitely there if you look close enough.
But the difference between the Kindle Scribe’s 300 PPI screen and the Elipsa 2E’s 227 PPI screen is not like the difference between games running on the Nintendo Switch versus 8-bit titles on the original NES. Even small text, like that featured in graphic novels, is still very legible and crisp on the Elipsa 2E’s screen, so I don’t think it’s a reason to not consider Kobo’s upgraded tablet.
A Better E-Note Stylus and Writing Experience
I tend to recommend e-note devices that rely on Wacom’s stylus’ technology because it means there are lots of compatible third-party options to choose from if the included stylus doesn’t meet your needs. Both the Elipsa and the Elipsa 2E use a proprietary stylus, and it was one of the reasons I walked away disappointed with the original.
I liked the fine tip of the first Elipsa’s stylus, but I felt it had too much give as it would retract into the stylus under pressure to mimic the feeling of a writing instrument like a ballpoint pen. The Kindle Scribe’s stylus uses a similar approach, but offers a better feel and writing experience. For the Elipsa 2E, Kobo has gone a completely different route and included a stylus with a chunkier tip similar to the Apple Pencil’s design. I definitely like it better than the original Elipsa’s stylus, and the switch to a rechargeable battery inside makes the Elipsa 2E’s stylus feel sleeker and lighter.
Switching to the highlight text mode with the Elipsa 2E’s stylus is still done by pressing a shortcut button near the tip, but the second shortcut button found on the Elipsa’s stylus, which was used to switch to eraser mode, is now gone and replaced with a dedicated eraser button on the end of the 2E’s stylus that actually looks like a pencil eraser. It looks and feels much better than the eraser on the end of the Kindle Scribe’s stylus, even if there’s a small part of me worried it’s going to wear away over time like a real eraser—it won’t.
The make or break feature for any e-note device is how the simulated pen on paper experience feels. Is it responsive enough so that the strokes you make with the stylus immediately appear on screen, or is there noticeable lag that makes the tablet feel like it’s struggling to keep up with your handwriting? Laggy stylus response was my biggest complaint with the original Elipsa, and while software updates improved the performance, the Elipsa 2E, thanks to a faster processor under the hood, feels really good to write with. I don’t think the writing experience is as good as what the reMarkable 2 or the Kindle Scribe offer, but it’s very close, and improved enough to make the Elipsa 2E an e-note I definitely recommend.
Kindle and Kobo Still Have Room For Improvement
One area where most e-note devices can be improved is getting documents, particularly your self-written notebooks, off the tablet. The Elipsa 2E can be connected directly to a PC with a USB-C cable to accomplish that, or notes can be emailed, but I find both to be clunky solutions. Its integrated Dropbox support is probably the best way to go, ensuring documents are synced to whichever of your devices has the Dropbox app installed. But as someone who recently said goodbye to Dropbox, I’m instead patiently waiting for Kobo’s promised Google Drive support to arrive.
I’d like to see Kobo and Amazon, two companies already dependent on the cloud, introduce more robust ways to access content created on their e-notes on other devices. Annotations made to ebooks on the Elipsa 2E are synced to Kobo’s cloud and accessible through the company’s website, but from my testing, only with ebooks downloaded from the company’s online book store. By comparison, right out of the box, reMarkable makes notebooks created on its E Ink tablet easily accessible on other devices through mobile and desktop apps through its own cloud services (and makes it very easy to upload other documents and ebook files this way), and I think Kobo and Amazon need to follow suit. As is stands now, it feels like you need to jump through unnecessary hoops unless you want all your notes trapped on their respective e-notes.
Despite those complaints, I think Kobo has delivered a much improved e-note device, and the Elipsa 2E is really what we should have gotten back in 2021. The pen on paper experience is finally very good, and the tablet offers advanced features like handwriting to text conversion, a stylus with pressure sensitivity, and, as with Kobo’s higher-end e-readers, audiobook support with connectivity to Bluetooth headphones. It’s currently a screen upgrade away from being one of the best e-notes on the market, but if you’re already a Kobo user with a huge library of purchased books, this is definitely the e-note to choose.
