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The problem with most e-readers is that they aren’t really designed for reading books. They are designed to sell you books. Amazon, which has the largest market share in the US, is particularly notable for this, but Barnes & Noble is guilty of the same. Kobo is probably the least offensive in this – it has Pocket and Overdrive integration! But every so often, when I found myself completely enamored with Kobo’s gorgeous new color e-readers, I was suddenly reminded: this thing is here to sell me books.

Which is a shame, because Kobo’s new Libra Color and Clara Color are the closest we’ve come to a perfect e-reader lately. Both the $219.99 Libra Color and the $149.99 Clara Color are ridiculously light, but with a strength that makes them feel comfortable and not flimsy. Both feature Kaleido 3 displays, which means book covers are rendered in true color. You both turn the pages and navigate the stores much faster than the $249.99 Boox Page (the Palma’s larger, slower sibling)—impressive, given the fact that the Kaleido 3’s display is a bit slower than the more traditional monochrome E Ink display found in Page .

I found myself liking the more expensive Libra because I prefer asymmetric e-readers with dedicated buttons to ones that function more like traditional tablets. That it has stylus support for note-taking is a plus. Still, each is a charming and enjoyable e-reader, and over the past few months I’ve repeatedly found myself reaching for the Libra instead of the Boox — which has been my primary e-reader until now. I just like the feel of reading it more. Sure, the Boox gives me every reading app available (it’s an E Ink Android tablet), but the Libra has none of the weird little hiccups typical of E Ink’s Android.

Both Kobo eReaders also support color text highlighting, and their touchscreens feel much faster and more responsive than the Boox Page. However, these light colors are not particularly vivid. The Kaleido 3 display found in both gives you color, but the color is similar to what you see on a newspaper left out in the sun for a few days. Plus, this color comes at the cost of making black-and-white reading a little less crisp. It’s still infinitely better than previous color E Ink technologies, which often gave the entire display a green tint.

My real issue with these devices isn’t the color displays. This is the lock.

Kobo e-readers feel designed more for buying books than for reading. They are affiliated with the Kobo bookstore, which is powered by Rakuten, a Japanese retailer that is often referred to as the “Japanese Amazon” or “Japanese Barnes & Noble” when people want to quickly sum up the company. Rakuten is very good at moving books and Kobo’s built-in bookstore is similar. It doesn’t have quite the same library as Amazon; Amazon has more self-published books and carries more niche content than boutique publishers. Still, Kobo’s bookstore has decent circulation. If it’s a widely popular book, you’ll find it on Kobo.

Unlike other non-Android eReaders, Kobo eReaders also have a more traditional library built in via Overdrive. If you have a library card from a library that works with Overdrive, you can borrow e-books. Unfortunately, this is when you start to run into Kobo’s book business colliding with the e-reader business. To borrow books, you either have to use your phone to find them in an app like Libby, or you have to use the Discover tab, then select the Overdrive tab and hope you can browse the book you want. Or you have to search for the book in the Kobo store and when you find the book you have to tap the More Options button next to the much larger Buy Now and Wishlist buttons and then actually tap the Borrow from Overdrive button to see if the book can borrowed from your library. It’s a shame, and when I asked a generally very smart friend to try borrowing a book, she couldn’t even figure out how.

You also cannot have more than one library card active on Kobo at the same time. Instead, when you finish a book and want to read another one that’s linked to another library card, you have to sign out and sign in with the other card. I had to switch back and forth between my New York Public Library and Jersey City Public Library cards and became deeply annoyed. I don’t need to do this when using the Libby app on my Page or iPad.

You run into the same problem using the built-in “experimental” web browser that Kobo has. I can navigate to websites just fine, and if I want to try reading a book on the web, I can theoretically do so. No app needed. Only the browser is painfully underdeveloped. It would be nice if I could scroll or paginate using Libra’s built-in buttons like I can with the EinkBro browser on Android e-readers.

Getting e-books from other stores onto the device is also a hassle. You have to plug the e-reader into your computer and drag and drop files (although Caliber, the e-book management app, makes it much easier). But this problem is not unique to Kobo. Amazon and Barnes & Noble also insist you load books on the side. But after years of the Boox (and iPad) ecosystem, it feels odd that all these systems insist you stick so close to their bookstores. It’s a degree of lock-in that seems absurd, and with Kobo’s ecosystem it feels even more absurd, because in so many other ways it really does seem like the company is trying to do e-readers right.

The Kobo Libra Color and Koko Clara Color are fast and almost perfect for getting out of your way when you just want to read a book. Their color displays aren’t as sharp as the iPad Mini’s LED — or even a monochrome E Ink display — but color adds a welcome pop to the experience that black and white can’t. The fact that they even offer things like a web browser and Overdrive and Pocket support is very welcome compared to what Amazon does. But the lock, man. Locking may be the norm in the e-reader world, but it doesn’t have to be.