Boox Palma 2 remains Boox Palma. That's the best and worst thing about it. A little more than a year after Onyx shipped its first $279.99 smartphone-sized e-reader — a device I love and use it almost every day – the company has released its successorAnd it is, in every meaningful way, that exact thing.
On one level this is fine. Good Also! The whole appeal of Palma is based on its simplicity. By shipping a device roughly the size of a smartphone, with access to all apps in the Play Store and an E Ink screen that's easy to view and lasts days without draining the battery, Onyx found a winning combo. For anyone looking for a way to easily read books, documents, and content from the web, there really isn't anything else like it. For me, it became not only a reader, but also a way to play music and podcasts, and even take quick notes, without having to delve into the chaotic swamp of my phone.
My biggest concern with the original Palma was how long it would last. It ran on an old chip and Android 11, which were badly out of date even when it launched. The Palma 2 has a new chip and Android 13, which means you can probably expect it to work and get security updates for at least a few years. However, I wouldn't count on anything beyond that – Onyx is much better at introducing new devices than updating its existing devices.
About that new processor: Onyx calls it a “faster octa-core CPU,” and I definitely can't tell the difference. It is better than the previous model, especially in graphics tasks, but in use, I did not see any improvement anywhere. Apps still open a little slower than I'd like; Page turn works fine but sometimes tap doesn't register; God help you if you ever try playing a game or watching a video. I'm not particularly bothered by the lack of performance upgrades, as “faster” isn't the point of this thing. But just keep it in perspective: The original Palma benchmarks like a solid midrange phone of 2017, and the Palma 2 tests like a solid midrange phone of 2019. Google's latest Pixel phones roughly triple the Palma 2's score. Bucs upgrade Palma, but only really, In fact From an old phone to a completely old phone.
Everything else about Palma is the same, for better and for worse. The 6.3-inch E Ink Carta display still looks good, and the plastic body still feels quite flimsy. It still has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is plenty for this gadget. The 16-megapixel camera works fine for scanning documents and QR codes and still takes decent photos. The power button is a little bigger than before and it now has a fingerprint reader for simple security, which is nice, but it's a little slow and a little finicky, and do you even need a passcode on the Palma? (I don't have one. Maybe I should.) My Palma 2's battery lasts four to five days on a charge, just like the old one.
I'm torn between whether Palma 2 is exactly what I wanted and somewhat of a missed opportunity. Onyx can do a lot more with this thing. A SIM slot could have been added and the Palma could have been turned into a proper minimalist smartphone. It could fix the huge gap between the glass and screen, upgrade the materials, and make something worthy of that $280 price tag. It could have refined Palma's approach to Android, cleaning up settings and removing unnecessary built-in apps to make it even simpler. Or give up on it all, remove the camera, downgrade the storage, and find a way to sell this thing for half the price.
Instead, Palma is Palma. If you have the last one, you definitely don't need it. If you don't have one of these, get one so it can last a while. This device may end up like the Kindle: year after year, there's usually no reason to upgrade, but when you break your device or leave it somewhere in a seat-back pocket, So a much better device is waiting to replace it. And like the Kindle, it seems the Palma's users will always have bigger ambitions for the product than its makers.
My real hope is that Palma gets some competition. This combination — smartphone size, E Ink screen, Android apps — isn't particularly sophisticated or proprietary, and there are plenty of ways other companies could do it better. There are some other options too (Here's a good Reddit thread Discussed some of them), but none including Onyx have done justice to this type of product yet. I'd love to see someone fix this.
Until then, Palma 2 will do just fine. It lets me read my books and articles, store my podcasts and my music, and makes it nearly impossible to get distracted by TikTok. Still a winning combo in my book.
Photography by David Pierce/The Verge