BOOX Palma2 Mobile ePaper eBook Reader Fingerprint Recognition Smart Button Dual Microphones Black

I’m impressed. Blown away, actually. I haven’t been this excited about a new device since I bought my first Kindle (a second-generation one) in 2009, and for considerably more money.

The Palma 2 is revolutionary. It’s also a truly elegant and thoughtfully designed device. If you’re considering getting one, you can already imagine why I like it so much. I assure you that I’m not disappointed in any way. It’s everything I’d hoped: very speedy, extremely nice to look at, a pleasure to read on in daylight and in the dark. It runs all of my Android apps.

I even like the native on-screen keyboard. Some reviewers report having rushed to install Gboard, but I’ve found the native keyboard to be excellent. I initially thought it didn’t have the multi-clipboard feature, but it does! As far as I’m concerned, the Boox keyboard is superior to Gboard. To give an example of a feature it has that I believe Gboard lacks: when you want to use square brackets, the Boox keyboard gives you both brackets with a tap on one key ( [] ) and positions your cursor between the two so that you can immediately enter text there. I have wanted this feature for a long time! [EDIT: I need to walk my endorsement of the native keyboard back a bit, because the dictionary that it uses for predictive text input is atrocious. Unusable. Laughable. Boox really needs to provide a usable predictive text input service. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any autocorrect.]

I’ve been similarly impressed with the native reading app, NeoReader. It’s elegant and highly functional. I’d been planning to use Readera or Moon+ Reader, but now I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be fine with just NeoReader, even though unfortunately it’s a “system app” that’s not available for installation on other Android devices. I think Boox should sell both NeoReader and the keyboard in the Play Store.

A year or two ago I might have hesitated to buy this kind of device from a Chinese company, but in light of what our own government is doing right now with the complicity of the tech bros–and also our alignment with Russia, our punishing of our allies and our pardoning of violent criminals–I no longer feel any added degree of safety limiting myself to American-branded tech products. It’s sad but true. No American company offers anything like the Palma 2, anyway. They should.

My only caveat would be that this is not a device for people who don’t like to think about any settings or options when it comes to technology. There’s a bit of a learning curve to an Android device with an e-ink display. People like me enjoy the novelty and experimentation, but I realize not everyone does. If you’re familiar with Android and like it, or if you know you wouldn’t mind learning it to get what the Palma 2 has to offer, I don’t think you’ll regret buying one.

One reviewer here calls the Palma 2 an e-ink phone. It’s not a phone. It has everything a phone does except for cellular connectivity. That’s made crystal clear in the product information and in every online review, so if you still think it’s a phone you haven’t done your homework yet.

I couldn’t recommend the Palma 2 more highly.

A final note: There aren’t many cases available specifically for the Palma 2, and none of the ones I found appealed to me at all. I decided to go with a pouch-style universal smartphone case with a zipper. That way there’s nothing on the device when I’m reading. I’m going to be very careful not to drop it, because if I chipped or cracked it I don’t think I’d be able to resist buying a new one!

I got this to replace a Kindle base model. It’s definitely a bit pricey in comparison but it seems solid enough. Read 500 pages out of ~1200 total in a book so far. No complaints about the screen here. Very customizable, in terms of refresh rate and display settings for specific apps, and also book layout/appearance in the included Neo Reader app.

Being phone size, it fits into your daily routine no problem. There’s so many ways to control books. Volume button, custom options in the Neo Reader app, it takes a little setting up but it’s worth the investment so far for me