There are really only three things you need to know about the Boox Palma. First, it’s roughly the size of a smartphone. Second, it runs Android and has the Play Store. Third, it has an E Ink screen. We’ll get to the other specs and features later, but the combination of a smartphone, Android, and E Ink is what makes the Palma what it is.
After using the Palma, a $280 device that’s been on the market since last fall, for a few months, I found that the combination was just what I wanted: It’s smartphone-sized, with a 6.1-inch screen and an overall footprint just a little bigger than a Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, so you can hold it in one hand or fit it in your pocket. It runs Android, so you can download the apps you want. It’s E Ink, so the battery lasts four days to a week, the screen is easy to see in low light, and, most importantly, most apps are just hard to use.
Sure, Palma can technically download TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. It can even play videos from those apps, albeit with a stuttering performance. But the low E Ink resolution, slow refresh rate, and overall black and white make it uncomfortable and unwilling to do so. Instead, you use what Palma’s screen does: it’s an e-reader first and foremost. Unlike other e-readers, it lets you read with the apps of your choice.
To hear more of our thoughts on Parma, check out this episode of The Vergecast.
The first app I downloaded onto my Palma was Amazon Kindle, where all my digital books are. And before I wondered why I hadn’t bought a Kindle, the second app I downloaded was Readwise Reader, an app for reading and organizing pretty much anything, including long articles and PDFs. It had already achieved something no other e-reader offered. After that, I downloaded two news apps, Flipboard, and the note app Obsidian.
After two months, these are still the apps I use most on Palma. The Boox comes with a few other pre-installed apps, like a voice recorder and music apps, but I barely touched them. Who needs those when you have Android! I downloaded Pocket Casts and Spotify instead. Now Palma is not only a Kindle, it’s an iPod too. I take it with me when I go out for coffee in the morning or to walk the dog in the afternoon.
A rare marketing image that matches how I actually use the device every night before bed. Image: Boox
I was surprised at how much my phone activity disappeared once I moved all my music listening and reading to another device. I never realized how often I would pull out my phone to change the song only to be drawn to a Slack message or a Gmail notification. (Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve received a single notification in the entire time I’ve had the device, thanks to the “mute notifications” feature on the Android version of the Boox.) Now that I take my Palma to coffee shops instead of my phone, I’m able to get more reading done because I’m not tempted at all by TikTok on this device. In fact, I’m offline most of the time. I turn off airplane mode, sync my various apps, disconnect, and get back to reading. Having a device that’s easy to carry, that can do everything technically, and that can easily do just what I want is exactly what I wanted.
“It’s just the perfect amount of friction,” Craig Mod told me when I told him about my experience with the Palma. Mod, a blogger, author, bookmaker, and longtime writer on digital reading, is also a Palma fan. He wrote a blog post about the device in May, and many people got excited about it; he thinks he’s convinced at least a few hundred people to buy one. “You don’t want to be surfing YouTube and saying, ‘Right, I’m going to watch MKBHD,'” he says. “But if you want… you can dive into that world for a bit.”
“It’s just the perfect amount of friction.”
This friction is a function of the device itself: the E Ink screen doesn’t update quickly enough to look good when playing videos. Can it be used in a pinch? Sure. But not enough to really get you hooked.
Like me, Mod said the combination of Palma’s size and screen is what made him love the device. “It’s perfect for one-handed use, it’s not heavy, and it doesn’t fall on your face in weird ways,” he said. “You can hold it in your hand, use your thumb to operate the volume control, and easily read an article until you fall asleep.” Did we mention you can set the volume buttons to turn pages when you press them? Awesome. Mod called Palma a “gentle lullaby of reading.”
Matt Martin, CEO of calendar startup Clockwise and new owner of Parma, agrees. “I want to read more,” he says. “I want to stop spending 30 minutes before bed on Instagram Reels.” He downloaded the New York Times app, Instapaper, Libby and a Kindle, and says he’s read more and watched less Reels since then.
Palma is definitely a great reader, but I also enjoy it as a music and podcast player. Image: Boox
“There’s an old anecdote we learned in Psychology 101,” Martin says, “which is that the physical environment matters. I think another device matters here. You’re reading, and you get to a section that’s hard to read, and suddenly you’re thinking, what was that thing I wanted to buy on Amazon? And there you are, blank-minded.” A device like Palma adds enough friction to stop that train before it goes too far.
Mod loves the Palma and wants to take the Boox even further. “I want to use this device as my main driver,” he says, “much more than an iPhone that’s trying to grab my attention every two seconds.” He also wants the Boox to get rid of the Palma’s rear camera, which I’ll be honest with you, I’d completely forgotten about until he mentioned it. It’s nice to have in a pinch, but this is no compact camera.
Boox didn’t make a perfect gadget. Not by a long shot. The plastic body is a bit flimsy, the screen is pretty far from the bezel, every action takes half a second longer than normal, and the screen is sometimes unresponsive. I wish the E Ink could do a full refresh a little more often to eliminate ghosting. (There’s a dedicated button to do that last bit, though, which is helpful.) For a $280 e-reader, I’d expect a bit more polish in both the hardware and software. The worst part is that the Palma runs Android 11, which is already pretty outdated and I don’t expect Boox to update it anytime soon, or ever. My Palma will probably slowly die app by app over the next few years. This is especially frustrating considering my needs are as simple as playing music and reading articles.
All Boox really had to do was gather the right ingredients.
What Boox has really done is combine the right elements — size, screen, apps — to make it feel like a smartphone complement rather than a replacement. I keep finding little new things I’d rather do with the Palma than my phone — for example, to solve the E Ink crossword, I’ve now installed the New York Times games app, and I just installed the Roku app, so I’m now using it as a backup remote and a place to plug in headphones when I want quiet listening.
This year has seen a lot of companies trying to fundamentally change how we use gadgets. Humane, Rabbit and others have introduced novel kinds of devices in the hope that we’ll find new and different ways to use them. Palma presents a less ambitious, but perhaps much more feasible, alternative: it’s a tweak of the smartphone formula, keeping what works while subtly changing the device’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s not as bright, not as fast, not as smooth. Instead, it’s quiet, simple and makes sense. And I like it.
