Boox Palma 2 review: ain’t broke, not fixed

The Boox Palma 2 remains a Boox Palma. That is the champion and worst point astir it. A small complete a twelvemonth aft Onyx shipped its first $279.99 smartphone-sized e-reader — a instrumentality I emotion and usage conscionable astir each day — the institution has released its successor. And it is, successful each meaningful way, the aforesaid nonstop thing.

On 1 level, this is fine. Good, even! The Palma’s full entreaty is based connected its simplicity. By shipping a instrumentality astir the size of a smartphone, pinch entree to each the apps successful the Play Store and an E Ink surface that’s easy to look astatine and takes days to drain the battery, Onyx recovered a winning combo. For anyone seeking a measurement to easy publication books, documents, and worldly from the web, there’s really thing rather for illustration it. For me, it became not conscionable a scholar but besides a measurement to play euphony and podcasts and moreover return speedy notes, without having to wade into the chaotic morass of my phone.

My biggest interest pinch the original Palma was simply really agelong it would last. It ran connected an aged spot and Android 11, some of which were woefully outdated moreover erstwhile it launched. The Palma 2 has a newer spot and Android 13, which intends you tin astir apt expect it to activity and get information updates for astatine slightest a mates of years. I wouldn’t count connected thing past that, though — Onyx is overmuch amended astatine spitting retired caller devices than updating its existing ones.

About that caller processor: Onyx calls it a “faster octa-core CPU,” and I perfectly positively cannot show the difference. It out-benchmarks the erstwhile model, peculiarly successful graphics tasks, but successful use, I didn’t announcement the betterment anywhere. Apps still unfastened a small slower than I’d like; page turns activity good but occasionally taps don’t register; God thief you if you ever effort to play a crippled aliases watch a video. I’m not particularly bothered by the deficiency of capacity upgrade, since “fast” is not the constituent of this thing. But conscionable to put it successful perspective: the original Palma benchmarks for illustration a coagulated midrange telephone from 2017, and the Palma 2 tests for illustration a coagulated midrange telephone from 2019. The latest Pixel phones from Google astir triple the Palma 2’s scores. Boox upgraded the Palma, but only from a really, really old telephone to conscionable a really aged phone. 

Everything other astir the Palma is the same, for amended and for worse. The 6.3-inch E Ink Carta show still looks good, and the integrative assemblage still feels beautiful flimsy. It still has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, some of which are plentifulness for this gadget’s purposes. The 16-megapixel camera useful okay for scanning documents and QR codes and still takes crappy pictures otherwise. The powerfulness fastener is simply a small bigger than earlier and now has a fingerprint scholar for simpler security, which is nice, but it’s a small slow and a small finicky, and do you moreover request a passcode connected a Palma? (I don’t person one. Maybe I should.) My Palma 2’s artillery lasts 4 to 5 days connected a charge, conscionable for illustration the aged one.

I’m torn betwixt the Palma 2 being precisely what I wanted and a spot of a missed opportunity. There’s truthful overmuch much Onyx could do pinch this thing. It could person added a SIM slot and turned the Palma into a due minimalist smartphone. It could person fixed the immense spread betwixt the solid and the screen, upgraded the materials, and made an entity worthy of that $280 value tag. It could person refined the Palma’s return connected Android, cleaning up settings and removing unnecessary built-in apps to make it moreover simpler. Or skip each that, ditch the camera, downgrade the storage, and find a measurement to waste this point for half the price.

Instead, the Palma is the Palma. If you person the past one, you decidedly don’t request this one. If you don’t person either, get this 1 truthful it’ll past a small longer. Maybe this instrumentality will extremity up for illustration the Kindle: twelvemonth to year, there’s usually not overmuch logic to upgrade, but erstwhile you break yours aliases time off it successful a seat-back pouch somewhere, there’s a solidly amended instrumentality waiting to switch it. And overmuch for illustration the Kindle, it seems the Palma’s users will ever person bigger ambitions for the merchandise than its makers.

My existent dream is that the Palma will get immoderate competition. This operation — smartphone size, E Ink screen, Android apps — isn’t peculiarly blase aliases proprietary, and location are plentifulness of ways different companies could do it better. There are immoderate different options retired location (here’s a bully Reddit thread discussing immoderate of them), but nobody, including Onyx, has done this type of merchandise justness yet. I’d emotion to spot personification get it right.

Until then, the Palma 2 will do conscionable fine. It lets maine publication my books and articles, stores my podcasts and my music, and makes it damn adjacent intolerable to get distracted by TikTok. Still a winning combo successful my book.

Photography by David Pierce / The Verge