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[1]Skip to main content
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The Boox Palma is an amazing gadget I didn’t even know I wanted
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The Boox Palma is an amazing gadget I didn’t even know I wanted
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/
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I thought I was buying an e-reader. And I was! But the smartphone-sized device
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does just enough other stuff that it now goes with me everywhere.
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By [16]David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade
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of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street
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Journal, and Wired.
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Jun 25, 2024, 1:30 PM UTC
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If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. [21]
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See our ethics statement.
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A photo of a person using a smartphone-like device near water.
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Imagine the exact middle between an iPhone and a Kindle. That’s the Palma.
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Image: Boox
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There are really only three things you need to know about [22]the Boox Palma.
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One: it’s about the size of a smartphone. Two: it runs Android, with the Play
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Store. Three: it has an E Ink screen. There are other specs and features I’ll
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get to, but that combination — smartphone, Android, E Ink — is the Palma’s
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whole reason for existence.
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In a couple of months of using the Palma, a [23]$280 device that has been on
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sale since last fall, that combination has turned out to be exactly what I
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needed. Because it’s smartphone-sized, with a 6.1-inch screen and an overall
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footprint just a smidge larger than the [24]Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, I can hold
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it in one hand and fit in my pocket. Because it runs Android, I can download
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any app I need. And because it’s E Ink, the battery lasts somewhere between
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four days and a week, the screen is easy to look at even in the dark, and — and
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this is the most important part — most apps are just awful to use.
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Sure, the Palma can technically download TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. It can
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even, stutteringly, play videos from those apps. But because of E Ink’s low
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resolution, slow refresh rate, and overall black-and-white-ness, it’s a crummy
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enough experience that I’m never tempted to do so. Instead, I find myself doing
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the things the Palma’s screen is built for. This thing is first and foremost an
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e-reader. It’s just that, unlike all the other e-readers, this one lets you
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read in whatever app you like to use.
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If you want to hear more about our thoughts on the Palma, check out [25]this
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episode of The Vergecast.
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The first app I downloaded onto the Palma was Amazon Kindle, which is where all
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my digital books are. And before you’re like, dude, why didn’t you just buy a
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Kindle, the second app I downloaded was Readwise Reader, an app for [26]reading
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and organizing longform articles, PDFs, and just about anything else. Already,
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I’d accomplished something no other e-reader offers. Then, I downloaded a
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couple of news apps, Flipboard, and the note-taking app Obsidian.
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Two months later, those are still the apps I use most on the Palma. Boox
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preinstalls a few others, like a voice recorder and a music app, but I barely
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touched those. Who needs ‘em when I have Android! I downloaded Pocket Casts and
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Spotify instead, and now my Palma is my iPod in addition to being my Kindle.
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When I go out for coffee in the morning or to walk the dog in the afternoon,
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only the Palma comes with me.
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An image of a woman reading on a Boox Palma in bed.An image of a woman reading
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on a Boox Palma in bed.
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An image of a woman reading on a Boox Palma in bed.An image of a woman reading
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on a Boox Palma in bed.
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The rare marketing image that actually matches how I use the device, every
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night before bed. Image: Boox
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I’ve been amazed by how much of my phone activity disappeared when I put all my
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listening and reading onto another device. I never noticed how often I’d dig my
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phone out to change songs, only to get pulled in by a Slack message or a Gmail
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notification. (Come to think of it, thanks to the “Notification Mute” feature
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in Boox’s version of Android, I don’t think I’ve gotten a single notification
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the whole time I’ve had this thing.) Now that I’m bringing the Palma and not my
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phone with me to the coffee shop, I’m getting more reading done because TikTok
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isn’t remotely tempting on this device. I’m actually offline most of the time
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— I’ll just take it off Airplane mode to sync the various apps, then shut off
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the connection and go back to reading. A device that is easy to have with me,
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that can technically do everything but only makes it easy to do the stuff I
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want, has been everything I wanted.
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“It’s just the absolute perfect amount of friction,” Craig Mod told me when I
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recounted my experience with the Palma. Mod — a blogger, author, and bookmaker
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who has been writing about digital reading for years — loves his Palma, too. He
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wrote [27]a blog post about it in May that got a lot of people excited about
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the device — he reckons he convinced at least a few hundred people to buy one.
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“You wouldn’t want to go surf YouTube and be like, ‘All right, let me watch
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MKBHD,’” he says. “But if I needed to… I could pop into that for a second.”
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“It’s just the absolute perfect amount of friction”
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That friction is a function of the device itself: E Ink screens just don’t
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refresh fast enough to look good playing video. Serviceable in a pinch? Sure.
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But not good enough to really suck you in.
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Like me, Mod said the Palma’s combination of size and screen sold him on the
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device. “It’s perfect one-handed, it’s not heavy, it’s not going to fall on
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your face in a weird way,” he said. “You’ve got it in your hand with your thumb
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on the volume controls, and you can easily go through an article until you fall
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asleep.” Did I mention you can set the Palma to flip pages when you press the
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volume buttons? Love that. Mod called the Palma “a gentle lullaby of a reader.”
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Matt Martin, the CEO of calendar startup Clockwise and another new Palma owner,
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echoed the sentiment. “I aspire to read more,” he said. “I aspire to not spend
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the 30 minutes before bed on Instagram Reels.” He downloaded the New York Times
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app, Instapaper, Libby, and Kindle and said he’s been reading more and
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Reels-ing less ever since.
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A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.
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A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.
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The Palma is definitely a reader first, but I’ve enjoyed it as a music and
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podcast player, too. Image: Boox
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“There’s the old anecdote we were all taught in Psych 101,” Martin said, “which
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is that physical environment matters. I think a separate device matters here:
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sometimes you’re reading, and you’re in a slow section, and you have that
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random thought, like, what was that thing I wanted to buy on Amazon? And you’re
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there without thinking about it.” A device like the Palma adds just enough
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friction to stop that train before it goes too far.
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Mod has enjoyed the Palma so much that he wants Boox to go even further. “I
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would love to have this thing as my main driver,” he said, “so much more than
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the dopamine casino iPhone where it’s vying for your attention every two
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seconds.” He also wants Boox to get rid of the camera on the back of the Palma,
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which, candidly, I’d completely forgotten about until he mentioned it. I
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suppose it’s nice to have in a pinch, but a point-and-shoot this is not.
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Boox didn’t build a perfect gadget here. Not by any stretch. The plastic body
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is a little flimsy, the screen is set pretty far behind the bezels, everything
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takes a half-second longer than it should, the screen can be unresponsive at
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times, and I wish it would full-refresh the E Ink to remove ghosting a little
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more often. (There’s a dedicated button for doing that last part, though, which
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helps.) For a $280 e-reader, I’d expect a little more polish in both hardware
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and software. Worst of all, the Palma runs Android 11, which is already wildly
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out of date, and I’m not counting on Boox updating it soon or ever. More than
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likely, my Palma will just slowly stop working, app by app, over the next
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couple of years. That’s particularly frustrating given how simple my needs are;
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for playing music and reading articles, there’s no reason this shouldn’t last
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forever.
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All Boox really did was put together the right set of ingredients
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All Boox really did was put together the right set of ingredients — size,
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screen, apps — into something that feels less like a replacement for my
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smartphone and more like a complement to it. I keep finding small new things I
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like doing on the Palma rather than my phone; I have The New York Times’ games
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app on there now for some E Ink crosswords, and I just installed the Roku app,
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for instance, so now it’s a backup remote control and a place to plug in my
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headphones when I need to listen quietly.
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This year has been filled with companies trying to overhaul the way we use our
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gadgets. Humane, Rabbit, and others have introduced wild new kinds of devices,
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hoping we might find new and different things to do with them. The Palma
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represents a much less ambitious — but maybe much more likely — alternative: it
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just tweaks the smartphone formula, leaving what works but subtly changing the
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device’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s not as bright, not as fast, not as
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frictionless. Instead, it’s quiet, simple, sane. And I love it for that.
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References:
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[1] https://www.theverge.com/24184777/boox-palma-e-ink-smartphone-reader#content
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[22] https://go.skimresources.com/?id=1025X1701640&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fshop.boox.com%2Fproducts%2Fpalma
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[23] https://www.amazon.com/BOOX-Palma-Mobile-ePaper-G-Sensor/dp/B0CHF746JZ/?tag=theverge02-20
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[24] https://www.theverge.com/24058916/samsung-galaxy-s24-plus-review-screen-battery-camera
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