What’s pleasant about this approach is that the Vox doesn’t feel like an arbitrary reskin of Android, in spite of the interface’s different functionality and look. The Vox’s customized Android interface puts a Kobo-centric spin on everything from notifications to the dock menu to the home-screen reading widget. The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary is also on board, but it doesn’t integrate with the reading function (the company says this feature is coming in a software update). Kobo includes Rdio for music streaming, Zinio for accessing some 4500 digital magazines, and PressReader for accessing over 1900 newspapers this arrangement keeps periodicals inconveniently separate from shopping at Kobo, as opposed to shopping at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. The bad part: Gingerbread is more designed for phones than it is for the 7-inch screen of a tablet. The good part: You get many of the stock Android apps that come with Gingerbread (email, calculator, contacts, calendar, clock, browser, gallery, YouTube), minus Google apps such as those for Gmail and the Android Market, since this is not a Google device. Of the three tablets, the Vox is the most like a true Android 2.3 Gingerbread tablet–which is both good and bad. Though it lacks the video/music download and streaming options that distinguish its competitors, the Vox deserves notice for coupling e-reading capabilities with the multimedia functions of a basic Android tablet. At $200 (as of November 20, 2011), the Kobo Vox is priced the same as the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Color, and $50 less than the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. Like its E Ink sibling, the Kobo Touch e-reader, the Vox has a social focus, and places an emphasis on sharing reading experiences. The Kobo Vox is a value-priced tablet with a twist.
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