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

The Boox Palma 2 remains a Boox Palma. That is the champion and worst happening astir it. A small implicit a twelvemonth aft Onyx shipped its archetypal $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, with entree to each the apps successful the Play Store and an E Ink surface that’s casual to look astatine and takes days to drain the battery, Onyx recovered a winning combo. For anyone seeking a mode to easy work books, documents, and worldly from the web, there’s truly thing rather similar it. For me, it became not conscionable a scholar but besides a mode to play euphony and podcasts and adjacent instrumentality speedy notes, without having to wade into the chaotic morass of my phone.

My biggest interest with the archetypal Palma was simply however agelong it would last. It ran connected an aged spot and Android 11, some of which were woefully outdated adjacent erstwhile it launched. The Palma 2 has a newer spot and Android 13, which means you tin astir apt expect it to enactment and get information updates for astatine slightest a mates of years. I wouldn’t number 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 archer the difference. It out-benchmarks the erstwhile model, peculiarly successful graphics tasks, but successful use, I didn’t announcement the betterment anywhere. Apps inactive unfastened a small slower than I’d like; leafage turns enactment good but occasionally taps don’t register; God assistance you if you ever effort to play a crippled oregon ticker a video. I’m not particularly bothered by the deficiency of show upgrade, since “fast” is not the constituent of this thing. But conscionable to enactment it successful perspective: the archetypal Palma benchmarks similar a coagulated midrange telephone from 2017, and the Palma 2 tests similar a coagulated midrange telephone from 2019. The latest Pixel phones from Google astir triple the Palma 2’s scores. Boox upgraded the Palma, but lone from a really, really old telephone to conscionable a truly aged phone. 

Everything other astir the Palma is the same, for amended and for worse. The 6.3-inch E Ink Carta show inactive looks good, and the integrative assemblage inactive feels beauteous flimsy. It inactive has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, some of which are plentifulness for this gadget’s purposes. The 16-megapixel camera works good for scanning documents and QR codes and inactive takes crappy pictures otherwise. The powerfulness fastener is simply a small bigger than earlier and present has a fingerprint scholar for simpler security, which is nice, but it’s a small dilatory and a small finicky, and bash you adjacent 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 similar 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 bash with 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 terms tag. It could person refined the Palma’s instrumentality connected Android, cleaning up settings and removing unnecessary built-in apps to marque it adjacent simpler. Or skip each that, ditch the camera, downgrade the storage, and find a mode to merchantability this happening for fractional 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 volition extremity up similar the Kindle: twelvemonth to year, there’s usually not overmuch crushed to upgrade, but erstwhile you interruption yours oregon permission it successful a seat-back pouch somewhere, there’s a solidly amended instrumentality waiting to regenerate it. And overmuch similar the Kindle, it seems the Palma’s users volition ever person bigger ambitions for the merchandise than its makers.

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

Until then, the Palma 2 volition bash conscionable fine. It lets maine work 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