The smartphone-like Boox Palma ebook reader hits a record low price

Kindles and Kobos are comparatively comfy to use, but if those are excessively large and restrictive, the smartphone-like Boox Palma is simply a fantastic alternate that’s grown connected america considerably. A new exemplary is connected its way, but if you don’t request the smoother show it promises, you tin prevention a spot connected the archetypal today. It’s down to $245.99 ($34 off) astatine Amazon, which is simply a caller all-time debased price.

The Palma’s hardware expanse and quality lucifer a smartphone, but it has neither calling capabilities nor a accepted display. It uses a 6.13-inch backlit E Ink Carta 1200 show instead, offering a crisp 300 ppi resolution. There’s a microphone and speaker, a microSD paper slot for expanding its 128GB of interior storage, measurement buttons that tin treble arsenic page-turning buttons, and adjacent a 16-megapixel camera with a flash for scanning documents and handwritten notes. Its pocket-stowable and one-handed signifier origin makes it much perfect for your mundane transportation than a full-sized reader.

One large vantage of the Boox Palma compared to astir ebook readers is that it runs Android 11 with Google Play, truthful you tin supplement its built-in tools and apps by downloading thing other you like. That means you aren’t locked into immoderate peculiar ebook ecosystem and don’t person to ditch your favourite sources. Missing your Amazon Kindle library? Just download the Kindle app — a overmuch amended proposition than manually sideloading everything. You tin besides usage your preferred euphony streaming work and quality apps.

However, the laggy idiosyncratic acquisition that befalls immoderate E Ink instrumentality tin beryllium limiting extracurricular of speechmaking and possibly immoderate casual listening and productivity tasks (and adjacent immoderate New York Times’ crossword puzzles, The Verge’s David Pierce found). It’s good if you’re conscionable scrolling done pages of your monthly reads, but not perfect for societal media deep-diving and different visually affluent shenanigans.

The incoming Boox Palma 2 brings a faster octa-core chipset and an Android 13 upgrade (and adds a fingerprint sensor), but nary 1 has tested it yet to find retired whether those changes volition construe to improved usability successful a applicable sense. If you’re looking to prevention a spot and commencement speechmaking today, you whitethorn not miss overmuch by staying a procreation behind.