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1 [1]Skip to main content 2 [2]The Verge logo.[3]The Verge homepage 3 4 • [4]The Verge homepageThe Verge logo./ 5 • [5]Tech/ 6 • [6]Reviews/ 7 • [7]Science/ 8 • [8]Entertainment/ 9 • [9]AI/ 10 • MoreMenu 11 12 [11]The Verge logo. 13 Menu 14 15 • [13]E-Reader Reviews/ 16 • [14]Reviews/ 17 • [15]Tech 18 19 The Boox Palma is an amazing gadget I didn’t even know I wanted 20 21 The Boox Palma is an amazing gadget I didn’t even know I wanted 22 23 / 24 25 I thought I was buying an e-reader. And I was! But the smartphone-sized device 26 does just enough other stuff that it now goes with me everywhere. 27 28 By [16]David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade 29 of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street 30 Journal, and Wired. 31 32 Jun 25, 2024, 1:30 PM UTC 33 34 Share this story 35 36 • 37 • 38 • 39 40 If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. [21] 41 See our ethics statement. 42 43 A photo of a person using a smartphone-like device near water. 44 Imagine the exact middle between an iPhone and a Kindle. That’s the Palma. 45 Image: Boox 46 47 There are really only three things you need to know about [22]the Boox Palma. 48 One: it’s about the size of a smartphone. Two: it runs Android, with the Play 49 Store. Three: it has an E Ink screen. There are other specs and features I’ll 50 get to, but that combination — smartphone, Android, E Ink — is the Palma’s 51 whole reason for existence. 52 53 In a couple of months of using the Palma, a [23]$280 device that has been on 54 sale since last fall, that combination has turned out to be exactly what I 55 needed. Because it’s smartphone-sized, with a 6.1-inch screen and an overall 56 footprint just a smidge larger than the [24]Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, I can hold 57 it in one hand and fit in my pocket. Because it runs Android, I can download 58 any app I need. And because it’s E Ink, the battery lasts somewhere between 59 four days and a week, the screen is easy to look at even in the dark, and — and 60 this is the most important part — most apps are just awful to use. 61 62 Sure, the Palma can technically download TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. It can 63 even, stutteringly, play videos from those apps. But because of E Ink’s low 64 resolution, slow refresh rate, and overall black-and-white-ness, it’s a crummy 65 enough experience that I’m never tempted to do so. Instead, I find myself doing 66 the things the Palma’s screen is built for. This thing is first and foremost an 67 e-reader. It’s just that, unlike all the other e-readers, this one lets you 68 read in whatever app you like to use. 69 70 If you want to hear more about our thoughts on the Palma, check out [25]this 71 episode of The Vergecast. 72 73 The first app I downloaded onto the Palma was Amazon Kindle, which is where all 74 my digital books are. And before you’re like, dude, why didn’t you just buy a 75 Kindle, the second app I downloaded was Readwise Reader, an app for [26]reading 76 and organizing longform articles, PDFs, and just about anything else. Already, 77 I’d accomplished something no other e-reader offers. Then, I downloaded a 78 couple of news apps, Flipboard, and the note-taking app Obsidian. 79 80 Two months later, those are still the apps I use most on the Palma. Boox 81 preinstalls a few others, like a voice recorder and a music app, but I barely 82 touched those. Who needs ‘em when I have Android! I downloaded Pocket Casts and 83 Spotify instead, and now my Palma is my iPod in addition to being my Kindle. 84 When I go out for coffee in the morning or to walk the dog in the afternoon, 85 only the Palma comes with me. 86 87 An image of a woman reading on a Boox Palma in bed.An image of a woman reading 88 on a Boox Palma in bed. 89 An image of a woman reading on a Boox Palma in bed.An image of a woman reading 90 on a Boox Palma in bed. 91 The rare marketing image that actually matches how I use the device, every 92 night before bed. Image: Boox 93 94 I’ve been amazed by how much of my phone activity disappeared when I put all my 95 listening and reading onto another device. I never noticed how often I’d dig my 96 phone out to change songs, only to get pulled in by a Slack message or a Gmail 97 notification. (Come to think of it, thanks to the “Notification Mute” feature 98 in Boox’s version of Android, I don’t think I’ve gotten a single notification 99 the whole time I’ve had this thing.) Now that I’m bringing the Palma and not my 100 phone with me to the coffee shop, I’m getting more reading done because TikTok 101 isn’t remotely tempting on this device. I’m actually offline most of the time 102 — I’ll just take it off Airplane mode to sync the various apps, then shut off 103 the connection and go back to reading. A device that is easy to have with me, 104 that can technically do everything but only makes it easy to do the stuff I 105 want, has been everything I wanted. 106 107 “It’s just the absolute perfect amount of friction,” Craig Mod told me when I 108 recounted my experience with the Palma. Mod — a blogger, author, and bookmaker 109 who has been writing about digital reading for years — loves his Palma, too. He 110 wrote [27]a blog post about it in May that got a lot of people excited about 111 the device — he reckons he convinced at least a few hundred people to buy one. 112 “You wouldn’t want to go surf YouTube and be like, ‘All right, let me watch 113 MKBHD,’” he says. “But if I needed to… I could pop into that for a second.” 114 115 “It’s just the absolute perfect amount of friction” 116 117 That friction is a function of the device itself: E Ink screens just don’t 118 refresh fast enough to look good playing video. Serviceable in a pinch? Sure. 119 But not good enough to really suck you in. 120 121 Like me, Mod said the Palma’s combination of size and screen sold him on the 122 device. “It’s perfect one-handed, it’s not heavy, it’s not going to fall on 123 your face in a weird way,” he said. “You’ve got it in your hand with your thumb 124 on the volume controls, and you can easily go through an article until you fall 125 asleep.” Did I mention you can set the Palma to flip pages when you press the 126 volume buttons? Love that. Mod called the Palma “a gentle lullaby of a reader.” 127 128 Matt Martin, the CEO of calendar startup Clockwise and another new Palma owner, 129 echoed the sentiment. “I aspire to read more,” he said. “I aspire to not spend 130 the 30 minutes before bed on Instagram Reels.” He downloaded the New York Times 131 app, Instapaper, Libby, and Kindle and said he’s been reading more and 132 Reels-ing less ever since. 133 134 A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music. 135 A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music. 136 The Palma is definitely a reader first, but I’ve enjoyed it as a music and 137 podcast player, too. Image: Boox 138 139 “There’s the old anecdote we were all taught in Psych 101,” Martin said, “which 140 is that physical environment matters. I think a separate device matters here: 141 sometimes you’re reading, and you’re in a slow section, and you have that 142 random thought, like, what was that thing I wanted to buy on Amazon? And you’re 143 there without thinking about it.” A device like the Palma adds just enough 144 friction to stop that train before it goes too far. 145 146 Mod has enjoyed the Palma so much that he wants Boox to go even further. “I 147 would love to have this thing as my main driver,” he said, “so much more than 148 the dopamine casino iPhone where it’s vying for your attention every two 149 seconds.” He also wants Boox to get rid of the camera on the back of the Palma, 150 which, candidly, I’d completely forgotten about until he mentioned it. I 151 suppose it’s nice to have in a pinch, but a point-and-shoot this is not. 152 153 Boox didn’t build a perfect gadget here. Not by any stretch. The plastic body 154 is a little flimsy, the screen is set pretty far behind the bezels, everything 155 takes a half-second longer than it should, the screen can be unresponsive at 156 times, and I wish it would full-refresh the E Ink to remove ghosting a little 157 more often. (There’s a dedicated button for doing that last part, though, which 158 helps.) For a $280 e-reader, I’d expect a little more polish in both hardware 159 and software. Worst of all, the Palma runs Android 11, which is already wildly 160 out of date, and I’m not counting on Boox updating it soon or ever. More than 161 likely, my Palma will just slowly stop working, app by app, over the next 162 couple of years. That’s particularly frustrating given how simple my needs are; 163 for playing music and reading articles, there’s no reason this shouldn’t last 164 forever. 165 166 All Boox really did was put together the right set of ingredients 167 168 All Boox really did was put together the right set of ingredients — size, 169 screen, apps — into something that feels less like a replacement for my 170 smartphone and more like a complement to it. I keep finding small new things I 171 like doing on the Palma rather than my phone; I have The New York Times’ games 172 app on there now for some E Ink crosswords, and I just installed the Roku app, 173 for instance, so now it’s a backup remote control and a place to plug in my 174 headphones when I need to listen quietly. 175 176 This year has been filled with companies trying to overhaul the way we use our 177 gadgets. Humane, Rabbit, and others have introduced wild new kinds of devices, 178 hoping we might find new and different things to do with them. The Palma 179 represents a much less ambitious — but maybe much more likely — alternative: it 180 just tweaks the smartphone formula, leaving what works but subtly changing the 181 device’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s not as bright, not as fast, not as 182 frictionless. Instead, it’s quiet, simple, sane. And I love it for that. 183 184 Most Popular 185 Most Popular 186 187 1. [29] 188 189 Microsoft is hiking the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and launching a 190 new ‘Standard’ tier 191 192 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 193 2. [30] 194 195 Samsung’s Galaxy Ring could be the one ring to rule an ecosystem 196 197 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 198 3. 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