Kobo Books vs Universal Viewer

Kobo Books is a digital platform for buying and listening to audiobooks, with apps for iOS and Android and playback on select Kobo eReaders with Bluetooth. The mobile app lets listeners pause, fast-forward, rewind, and resume playback. Downloaded audiobooks can be played on a smartphone or tablet without an internet connection, and Bluetooth headphones or speakers can be used with the app. Kobo Plus Listen costs $7.99 a month after a 14-day free trial, plus applicable taxes. Kobo Plus Read & Listen costs $9.99 a month after the trial, plus applicable taxes. These subscriptions include audiobooks, or eBooks and audiobooks in the latter plan, but neither includes every title. Subscription credits also apply only to eligible audiobooks. Audiobooks cannot be played in the Kobo Desktop app or on a laptop or desktop computer. On iOS, audiobook purchases must be made through Kobo.com because the app does not support in-app purchases. Kobo Plus members can open up to 15 books offline in an eReader or app during a 30-day period before reconnecting and syncing. Kobo is based in Toronto and was founded in December 2009.

Universal Viewer is a Windows desktop application for opening a wide range of file formats in one viewer. It handles images, multimedia, Word and Excel files, PDF, RTF, internet formats, text, and formats supported by Total Commander Lister plugins. Image support includes over 40 graphics formats and RAW images from 400+ cameras; its multimedia player supports over 170 formats without external codecs. In the Pro version, Word and Excel files including DOCX and XLSX open without MS Office, and a PDF plugin works without Adobe or Foxit Reader. Pro also adds complex RTF and RAW image support, an image panel with a Convert to feature, and highlighted text search. Text mode handles files of unlimited size, including those over 4 GB, with encodings such as Unicode and UTF-8. Windows Explorer context-menu integration provides a way to open files in the viewer. The free edition’s multimedia support depends on the Windows Media Player engine. Listed system requirements include Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, and 11. The Pro version has a 15-day trial; paid access starts at $26.