The Boox Palma can't replace your phone, but maybe it should
This tiny e-reader will make you read more books
So, I finally jumped on the bandwagon and checked out the Boox Palma.
This is admittedly a niche device. But I'd heard enough good things whispered over the past few months to make me think it was worth my attention.
I'm afraid everyone was completely right and you should buy this thing immediately.
The Boox Palma is a new device from Onyx, a Chinese company that makes a wide range of e-readers. You'll often see new E Ink technology like colour Kaleido screens pop up first or close-to-first in Boox products. This Tab Ultra C Pro, for example, is like an e-reader take on the iPad Pro, complete with keyboard accessory.
The Palma costs $280 and is not particularly ambitious on a technical level. It is essentially a phone-sized e-reader that runs Android. Or, from another point of view, it's a low-end Android phone with a monochrome E Ink screen and no cellular connectivity. E Ink smartphones do exist, most notably from Hisense, but the Palma is oriented around the e-reader use case.
Since it runs Android and includes the Google Play store, you can install apps like Kindle, The New Yorker, Substack, or just about anything else. You probably don't want to watch YouTube on the Palma, but it's very easy to find things to read. Onyx's own store is an afterthought and mostly just contains a bunch of public-domain works.
At 6.13" with a phone-style aspect ratio, I thought the screen might be too small to deliver a proper e-reader experience. It uses micro-etched glass and has a sharp 300ppi, so display quality isn’t the issue — it’s just that at home I always use the biggest Kindle available, which is currently the iPad-sized Scribe. But not only did I get used to the screen quickly, I'm coming round to the idea that this might be the best e-reader form factor.
The Palma is far from the first phone-sized e-reader, but it's the first I've seen that really goes all-in on the concept with thoughtful, reader-focused design. The plastic back panel has a rough texture that evokes crinkly old paper and is comfortable to hold for a long time. There's a button on the left that by default is set to refresh the screen, which is helpful for getting rid of occasional ghosting. You can set the volume rocker to act as page-turn buttons, instantly making the Palma more enjoyable to use than pretty much any modern Kindle.
Onyx hasn't completely overhauled Android for the Palma; it mostly works like a phone. But there are a lot of useful tweaks built around the e-reading experience. The screen has several refresh modes that make sense for different use cases. HD is best for reading text, for example, because it fully refreshes the display more often to preserve detail. Alternatively you can switch to Ultrafast, which doesn't look as good but makes it just about practical to scroll through content or even watch videos in a pinch. You can also configure individual settings like contrast on a per-app basis, and there are handy sliders in the notification shade for frontlight brightness and colour temperature.
All of this does require a degree of tweaking, but the upshot is that the Palma has the fastest, most versatile E Ink screen I've ever used. I only use a handful of apps on it, and it took just a minute or two of setup to figure out what'd work best for each. I personally think the automatic settings are a little conservative with the frontlight and skew too cool, but it’s easy to change them based on your ambient lighting situation.
The Palma also makes for an unexpectedly good music player. It doesn't have a headphone jack, but you can pair anything over Bluetooth and run apps like Apple Music and Spotify. I mostly use the Palma offline, so downloading music to it in advance feels like loading up an iPod. The Palma has 128GB of internal storage, which is overkill for ebooks and still a lot for music, especially since there's also a microSD card slot for expansion.
I don't know about you, but I'm constantly losing track of what music I have downloaded to my phone, between upgrades and account switches and storage management. The Palma is a great place to download the music I really care about for safekeeping, or as safe as it can be with a streaming service. I know I can turn it on at any time and everything will be there.
It helps that the E Ink screen means you get e-reader-level power efficiency out of the Palma. You can run it down relatively quickly if you're using the high refresh rate modes and a lot of internet connectivity, of course, but in general use you can expect to measure the battery life in weeks.
Again, that's the thing about the Palma: it's always there. It feels like a phone, and you can reach for it like you instinctually do for your phone dozens of times a day. It's still a screen, of course. But it isn't a phone.
I don't know that this is the solution for anyone wanting to touch grass and escape technology altogether. I do think it's the solution for anyone wanting to read more books instead of burning time on social media. I have probably spent more time reading books in my couple of months with the Palma than I did in the past year.
Reading on the Palma feels effortless. The page-turn/volume buttons go a long way to immersing you in the book. Either you’re holding the device in your right hand and resting your thumb on the rocker, or it’s in your left hand and you’re turning pages with your index finger. You quickly forget about the screen size and roll with what you’re reading.
I like phones, obviously. But I do recognise that a lot of the time I spend using them is not particularly meaningful. When I was a kid, I was completely addicted to reading books. My parents would tell me to stop reading at the dinner table the same way they might tell me to put my phone away today. I think it is just kind of inevitable that I'm always going to want to have access to things to read. And all things considered, I think it's better for my life if what I'm reading is books.
It's honestly hard to imagine how Onyx could have made the Palma much better for what it is. If it had cellular connectivity I'd just be reading Twitter in monochrome. I guess faster (or wireless) charging would be nice? Maybe some better lockscreen wallpapers? I'm reaching here.
The Boox Palma is just a great product. It might already be my favourite e-reader of all time. How could it not be, when it's the one I'm by far the most likely to actually use?