When you consider the firsts regarding anything e-reader, you’d probably think Amazon Kindles right away, wouldn’t you? But may I remind you, the Toronto-based Kobo Inc. was the company to come up with the first waterproof tablet of its kind, dubbed the Kobo Aura H20! On a similar plot, Kobo has officially launched the 7.8-inch Aura One, a tablet with a bigger display than both its predecessor and leading competitors.

The latest from Kobo features an 1872 x 1404 pixel illuminated Cara E-Ink touchscreen display, which is pretty darn up there for e-ink screens. Although the Kindle Voyage had this, and it’s as sharp as reading ink on a real piece of paper, considering the size of the Aura One, it really is the best out there at the moment. While Amazon Kindles, in their early eras, used to be around the 9.7 inch mark, we’ve been seeing more obscure startups, such as Kobo, maintaining more standard sizes (6-7 inches) for the e-reader/tablet niche. However, this e-reader features a plentiful canvas- measuring 7.8 inches; and at just 195.2 x 138.5 x 6.9mm thick, and weighing just 230 grams, the Aura One is doing its best to match that 300ppi display. This marks Kobo’s its biggest tablet to date, and the highest resolution e-ink screen on the market.

Besides that gorgeous display that you will notice right away, one you will realize sooner or later is the water resistance factor. The Aura One meets up to IPX8 standards, a.k.a, the willingness to be submerged into 2 meters of water. Even its previous e-reader was water resistant, but its IP67 rating is officially beat.

As far as software, the Aura One has something cute and helpful it can do. It changes the color temperature of the screen, and in sunlight, is crisp and clear, all while barely using any battery power. Of course the screen can be set to your liking, but auto-adjusting throughout the day sure would help, especially as much as folks have been discussing the blue light “issue” and how it’s bad for anyone winding down for the night. This device takes a stab at making blue light a non-issue, something Kobo dubs ComfortLight Pro. Extra points for Kobo, because this is something other e-readers are not currently doing.

Wow that’s a lot of cool stuff to get around before speaking of internal hardware. I find that impressive, usually that’s all there is to talk about and then, “end of story”. The Aura HD, priced at $230, sports a 1GHz processor (sorry I can’t give more specifics there), 8GB of internal storage, 512MG of RAM, and 802.11b/g/n wireless connectivity. Besides that, we know Kobo has a whopping 5 million items to choose from inside its bookstore. It may not quite be what Amazon has, still, nearly anything and everything you’d ever desire upon bootup will be there. So that’s that, the Aura One has enough new features to give it a brightness that other companies don’t provide. E-readers tend to evolve on their own time, incrementally, and without too many pushes like other mobile devices out there. Big enough to draw a wandering crowd is the Aura One’s size, blue-light fix, and water resistance features.