Boox Palma 2 remains Boox Palma. That’s the best and worst thing about it. A little over a year after Onyx shipped its first smartphone-sized e-reader for $279.99 — a device I love and use almost every day — the company has released its successor. And it is, in every significant way, exactly the same.
Good
- Pretty good size for an e-reader
- Updated version of Android
- Excellent battery life
Bad
- Still too expensive
- It still runs on outdated specifications
- The new chip doesn’t feel much faster
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On one level this is fine. Even good! The entire charm of Palma is based on its simplicity. By shipping a device about the size of a smartphone, with access to all the Play Store apps and an E Ink screen that’s easy to look at and whose battery lasts for days, Onyx has found a winning combination. For anyone looking for a way to easily read books, documents, and other material from the Internet, there really is nothing like it. For me, it has become not only a reader, but also a way to play music and podcasts, and even take quick notes, without having to wade through the chaotic swamp of my phone.
My biggest concern with the original Palm was simply how long it would last. It ran on an old chip and Android 11, which was already woefully outdated at launch. The Palm 2 has a newer chip and Android 13, which means you can probably expect it to run and receive security updates for at least a few years. I wouldn’t count on anything more, though – Onyx is much better at releasing new devices than updating existing ones.
About this new processor: Onyx calls it a “faster octa-core processor” and I absolutely cannot tell the difference. It outperforms the previous model, especially in graphic tasks, but I haven’t noticed any improvement in use. Apps still open a little slower than I’d like; page turning works fine, but sometimes clicks don’t register; God help you if you ever try to play a game or watch a movie. I’m not particularly concerned about the lack of performance improvement because “fast” isn’t what it’s about. But to put it into perspective: the original Palm tests like a solid midrange phone from 2017, and the Palm 2 tests like a solid midrange phone from 2019. Google’s latest Pixel phones roughly triple the performance of the Palm 2. Boox has updated the Palm, but only from a really, really old phone to just a really old phone.
Can you tell the difference between Palma 2 and Palma? Yeah, me neither.
Everything else about Palma is the same, for better or for worse. The 6.3-inch E Ink Carta display still looks good, and the plastic casing still seems quite flimsy. It still has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is more than enough for the purposes of this gadget. The 16-megapixel camera does a good job of scanning documents and QR codes, and it still takes crappy photos. The power button is slightly larger than before and now has a fingerprint reader for simpler security, which is nice, but it’s a bit slow and a bit finicky, and do you even need a password on the Palm? (I don’t. Maybe I should.) My Palm 2’s battery lasts four to five days on a single charge, just like the old one.
I’m torn between Palma 2 being exactly what I wanted and a bit of a missed opportunity. Onyx can do a lot more with this. He could have added a SIM card slot and turned the Palm into a truly minimalist smartphone. This could have repaired the huge gap between the glass and screen, improved the materials, and created an object worthy of the $280 price tag. This could have refined Palm’s approach to Android, cleared up settings and removed unnecessary built-in apps to make things even easier. Or you can skip all this, ditch the camera, reduce the memory, and find a way to sell this device for half the price.
Instead, Palma is Palma. If you have the latter, you definitely don’t need this one. If you don’t have any of these, buy this one to make it last a little longer. Maybe this device will end up like the Kindle: there’s usually not much reason to upgrade from year to year, but if you break yours or leave it somewhere in your seatback pocket, a much better device is waiting to take its place. And as with Kindle, it seems Palm users will always have greater ambitions for the product than its creators.
Here’s one hardware change: a larger power button with a fingerprint reader.
I hope Palma will have competition. This combination – smartphone size, E Ink screen, and Android apps – isn’t particularly sophisticated or proprietary, and there are plenty of ways that other companies can do it better. There are a few other options (here’s a good Reddit thread discussing some of them), but no one, including Onyx, has yet done this type of product justice. I’d like to see someone do it right.
Until then, Palm 2 will be doing great. It allows me to read books and articles, stores my podcasts and music, and makes it almost impossible to get distracted by TikTok. Still a winning combination in my book.
Photography: David Pierce / The Verge
Credit : www.theverge.com
