I’m not ashamed to admit the Kobo Remote is the best gadget I’ve bought this year

The Kobo Remote is small and lightweight, but large enough to be comfortable to hold. Does anyone really need a remote for a device you’re already either holding or using at arm’s length? E-readers have saved us from the risk of paper cuts and the burden of physically turning pages, but Kobo is making it even easier by releasing a wireless page-turning remote. The Kobo Remote might be indulgent and basic, but it’s all about maximizing convenience, and at the end of the night when I’m looking to unwind with a good book, that’s exactly what I want.Wireless remotes for e-readers aren’t a new idea, but none of them just directly connect to Kindles and Kobos, despite recent versions of those e-readers now supporting Bluetooth. You either need to jump through hoops to modify the software on your e-reader to make it connect to specific third-party remotes, or settle for a remotely operated accessory that attaches to an e-reader and physically taps the screen to turn the page.Clip-on page turners have always felt too c**bersome and complicated to me. I’m probably not alone, because shortly after it launched last November, the $30 Kobo Remote quickly sold out and remained out of stock for several months. It wasn’t until late January that I was finally able to buy one, and while I think Kobo could have squeezed in a little more functionality, both my wife and I have readily embraced the remote.At just shy of 4 inches long and about the size of a pack of Juicy Fruit, the Kobo Remote is a lot smaller than I was expecting. It feels even smaller in my large hands, but at the same time big enough to comfortably hold and operate, and to not get lost in the bedsheets if dropped. The remote includes an optional wrist lanyard, which on more than one occasion has prevented it from going missing when I’ve fallen asleep reading.There’s no rechargeable battery, but Kobo says the included AAA should last for months. The remote will only connect to Kobo devices that support Bluetooth for audiobooks, but the pairing process is as painless as connecting headphones. Once paired, the remote automatically reconnects when your Kobo wakes, requiring just a second or two before it’s ready to go. If you want to connect it to a different e-reader, a b***on on the front edge of the remote manually activates pairing mode.The remote has two clicky b***ons. The larger one goes to the next page, and the smaller one flips back. They’re easy to differentiate by touch — in addition to the size difference, one b***on is concave, while the other is convex — but you can’t customize their functionality. It would be nice to be able to press and hold either b***on to increase or decrease screen brightness, or make font size adjustments. And my wife, a voracious consumer of audiobooks, was disappointed to find she couldn’t use the remote’s b***ons to adjust the volume or pause playback — they only skip forward or back 30 seconds at a time.Is the Kobo Remote a must-have accessory for every Kobo user? Probably not, but we’ve already found several scenarios where it’s been a welcome upgrade. My wife, who uses her Kobo mounted to a bedside stand, can now read books while staying completely cocooned under the covers. I prefer reading while laying on my side and can now prop my Kobo up on my nightstand and flip pages without having to awkwardly reach over.

Kobo Remote

Where to Buy:

$29.99 at Rakuten Kobo
$32 at Amazon

The remote has also made reading on the treadmill easier. And for Kobo e-readers lacking b***ons, it can facilitate page turns while wearing gloves during a chilly morning commute, or save your screen from greasy fingerprints while snacking. It’s an accessory that’s all about comfort, ease, and convenience, and these days I’ll take about as much of all of those as I can get.Photography by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge

Stacy Rose
United States

Grand Theft Auto VI exists in its own universe

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on GTA VI and the state of the video game industry, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

I cut my phone’s animation speed in half, and now it feels twice as fast

I've been using my Galaxy Z Flip 5 for about three years now, so it's easy to blame its age whenever it feels a little slower than it used to. But there's a difference between a phone actually taking longer to do something and Android simply taking its sweet time...

Daniel Martinez
Dallas

Your GPU’s upscaler has a secret second job, and nobody’s talking about it

I used to think of upscaling as a fairly simple trade-off. You give up some of the internal resolution of the image, and in return, DLSS or FSR would give you enough performance to push higher settings or a higher output resolution. That is still its biggest selling point, but...

Olivia Miller
Seattle

I ditched my mesh router after discovering the one setting that actually matters

You might think the best option when you hit a Wi-Fi dead zone at home is to invest in an expensive multi-node mesh system to ensure full coverage. However, there are downsides to adding consumer mesh nodes around the house, including wireless backward congestion, doubled latency hops, roaming packet drops,...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

I switched to this underrated Launcher, and my Pixel finally feels fun again

I've used plenty of Android launchers over the years, but most eventually start to feel the same. You install one, spend an hour changing icons and wallpapers, and then go back to using your phone like before. I wasn't looking for another launcher with endless customization options. I wanted something...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

The C64 Mini showed me how fearless and wild ’80s game development really was

When one of our D&D group members couldn't make it to the session, we decided to make a night of it anyway. We headed over to a local pub, only to be told that they were about to start a pub quiz and that we were welcome to join. We...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

Your Wi-Fi router is leaking airtime to legacy devices, and here is the 10-second fix

Even though you have a modern Wi-Fi 6, 6E, or 7 router and high-spec endpoints capable of gigabit wireless throughput, your network might still suffer from random latency spikes, package jitter, and sluggish page loads. This is down to airtime starvation. Wi-Fi is a shared half-duplex medium. It doesn't matter...

Daniel Martinez
Dallas

I switched from Notion to a plain Markdown folder and Syncthing, and I’m faster than I ever was before

I have been a long-time Notion user. I have used it to take notes, prepare documents, write my articles, and even present things to people. I stuck around primarily because it has a dark mode, which Google Docs doesn’t have on desktop, and I found features like rich embeds helpful.

Daniel Martinez
Dallas

Google’s new Android sideloading rules could undermine the OS’ biggest strength

My very first smartphone was a Google Nexus One, which my dad bought me when I was 16. Back then, I would install APKs from outside the Play Store all the time, mainly because some of them weren't available in my region. Even though Android has come a long way...

William Garcia
Boston

Unsloth’s new desktop app does the one thing LM Studio and Ollama never let me do

I’ve tried several tools for running AI models locally, but I keep returning to Ollama and LM Studio. Both make it easy to download a model and start chatting without building a complicated environment first. I can change the system prompt or connect the model to another app through an...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

Netflix looks worse on my PC than on a $30 streaming stick, and it isn’t the hardware

There is a major hardware contrast between my $2,500 custom gaming PC that features an RTX 40-series GPU, a high-end 4K HDR display, and a Gigabit fiber connection, and a $30 Amazon Fire TV Stick plugged into the same monitor. Yet somehow my PC delivers a blurry, artifact-ridden 720p or...

Olivia Miller
Seattle

My Jellyfin server has four layers of protection, and RAID isn’t the most important one

I’ve invested enough time in my Jellyfin library that losing it would be more than a storage problem. The media files matter, obviously, but so do everything I’ve done around them: folder organization, metadata, artwork, watched status, collections, and all the little choices that make the server behave the way...

Emily Brown
Houston

Previous Story Next Story

Language

I’m not ashamed to admit the Kobo Remote is the best gadget I’ve bought this year

Kobo Remote

Where to Buy:

Grand Theft Auto VI exists in its own universe

I cut my phone’s animation speed in half, and now it feels twice as fast

Your GPU’s upscaler has a secret second job, and nobody’s talking about it

I ditched my mesh router after discovering the one setting that actually matters

I switched to this underrated Launcher, and my Pixel finally feels fun again

The C64 Mini showed me how fearless and wild ’80s game development really was

Your Wi-Fi router is leaking airtime to legacy devices, and here is the 10-second fix

I switched from Notion to a plain Markdown folder and Syncthing, and I’m faster than I ever was before

Google’s new Android sideloading rules could undermine the OS’ biggest strength

Unsloth’s new desktop app does the one thing LM Studio and Ollama never let me do

Netflix looks worse on my PC than on a $30 streaming stick, and it isn’t the hardware

My Jellyfin server has four layers of protection, and RAID isn’t the most important one

Express your creativity and start building your project