I ditched my Kindle for it, and I’m not going back

I loved reading as a kid, and I still read now, though less frequently, because I tend to lose myself way too easily in books and end up neglecting work and other obligations to finish them. Still, for the past decade, I’ve had a Kindle of some sort on my bedside table. Not anymore, though. I skipped right past the e-ink tablet category and found an alternative that actually works better for me: the Onyx BOOX Palma 2 ($299.99 at Amazon).

It’s smaller, lighter, easier to carry everywhere, more versatile, and after using it for a month, I don’t see myself going back to a Kindle for most of my reading.

My Kindle Paperwhite 2021 is still fantastic. It has a battery that lasts for weeks on end, a nice e-ink screen that can be easily read when it’s sunny outdoors with built-in LED lights to continue reading in the dark, an IPX8 rating to resist water, and it’s noticeably faster than my previous Kindles. But my issue with it has always been the size.

I am not a tablet-carrying person — not even around my house. Anything larger than a phone gets relegated to stationary use, and worse yet, I’ll think twice, if not ten times, before I take it away on a trip. Basically, if a gadget doesn’t easily fit in my pocket and requires that I keep it in a backpack, I know I’m likely to ignore it, so I don’t bring it along. That’s why I use earbuds on planes and trains even though I have two excellent pairs of over-ear headphones, and in the 10 years that I’ve owned a Kindle, I don’t think I’ve ever brought one on any trip.

The BOOX Palma 2 changed all of this for me. I didn’t expect the small size to affect how often I use an e-reader, but it did. At 159mm x 80mm, it is nearly half the footprint of my Paperwhite’s 174mm x 125mm, and significantly lighter, too (170g vs 205g). It’s the width, specifically, that plays such a crucial role in making it a pocket-friendly, single-handed, use-while-walking experience versus the Kindle’s two-handed, sit-down experience.

Because of its small size, the Palma 2 doesn’t sit on my bedside table like the Kindle does. It often stays in my lounge or pyjama pants’ pockets, so it’s almost always with me at home. I don’t think the Kindle ever saw the outside of my bedroom door, but the BOOX Palma 2 has been with me on all three floors, on the terrace, and, uh, in several bathrooms, too. I even took it with me on the subway a couple of times! And when I was packing for a short trip to Budapest a couple of weeks ago, I looked at it and thought, “Oh, why not?” and brought it along. I slipped it in my pocket before take-off, read my book, and slipped it back in my pocket when we landed. No backpack fussing necessary — a dream for me.

Plus, as someone who suffers from Carpal Tunnel pain, the smaller size and lighter construction have helped me read longer without feeling wrist cramps or needing to switch hands every few minutes. Going back to my Kindle Paperwhite feels like such a downgrade in portability and usability now.

The 300ppi HD e-ink display has been a joy to use as well, both indoors and outdoors, and I appreciate Onyx BOOX’s software, which has a million and one settings to control the brightness, warmth, contrast, refresh rate, scroll percentages, app responsiveness, dark and light colors, and more — sometimes even on a per-app basis — so I can optimize the e-ink experience to my liking. Amazon barely lets me change a thing or two, in comparison.

On top of that, the build quality feels “rugged,” even if it isn’t. This is the only device I carry without a case, and I don’t feel like I need one despite how clumsy I am. I feel that the textured back is very forgiving and that the anti-reflective glass display is impossible to break or scratch. Maybe I’m wrong there, but there’s an indestructible impression you get when holding the Palma 2 that you don’t have with today’s fragile and shiny glass-covered phones.

My Kindle Paperwhite is a reading machine. I open up a book, read, finish it, and move to the next. Sure, there’s a web browser, but it’s so laughably unusable that I rarely, if ever, resort to it. I’ve been yearning for an Android-powered e-reader for years (I even tried the HUAWEI MatePad Paper for a while), and the BOOX Palma 2 filled that need for me. It runs Android 13 with full access to the Play Store, so it can technically become a SIM-less phone with all of your apps and games.

But I had learned my lesson from the MatePad Paper: Android and e-ink don’t mix well if you try to do too much. That’s why I didn’t try to treat this like a regular Android phone, and instead, I set it up like a Kindle+. Onyx has its own suite of BOOX software on there, which seems fit for purpose, but I didn’t want to change my own habits, and that’s the benefit of having the Play Store at my fingertips.

I downloaded the Kindle app to carry over all my ebooks and documents, and then I added the apps that my Paperwhite doesn’t let me use: Google Play Books for my other ebooks and PDF documents, Chrome with all my bookmarks, history, and login info, DuckDuckGo for private browsing, my favorite writing app JotterPad, and even Home Assistant to experience what an e-ink smart home dashboard experience could be like.

I love this versatility that the Kindle doesn’t afford me. The idea that I can get any app or any service to run on this little unit is freeing. If/when I need them, I could get Spotify to stream music while reading, Audible for audiobooks, Todoist to manage my to-dos, ChatGPT or Gemini to do more extensive research, Google Drive to access my online documents, and so on. However, I’ve consciously decided to keep disruptions away from this reader, so any communication or social media app isn’t welcome on it — no Gmail, Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, or Instagram here. Oh, and there’s microSD support, too, so I can sideload many books and documents without going through cloud services. Perfect.

I’d be lying if I said that the experience is exactly like it is on my Pixel 9 Pro XL with third-party apps, though. The Palma 2 only has 6GB of RAM, so opening several apps results in freezes before I can clear the memory. This happened about once a week with the Kindle app. Also, even on the fastest refresh setting, the e-ink display isn’t as good as a gorgeous 120Hz AMOLED display — obviously. It’s black-and-white, too.

But that is the charm of the Palma 2, in my opinion. The fact that I have to slow down, ignore disruptions, and focus on one app at a time is a tremendous plus in this hectic life we live, where everything is vying for our attention. I find that I’m more focused writing on JotterPad on the Palma 2 than on my phone. And even in black-and-white, I can read more Android Authority articles to catch up on the daily tech news cycle than on my beautifully colored Pixel or iPad display.

It helps that the Onyx BOOX software adds some extra features to let the app experience be the best it can. For every app, I can optimize the display settings, color settings, side button function (page turn, volume, or scrolling), and keep it active in the background. So if your eyes are getting old like mine, and you find that the Kindle app’s fonts are too small for your liking, you can change the DPI and force the entire app to be more easily readable.

The customizable side button is also perfect to avoid the slowness of e-ink reactions. I have mine set up to open the app switcher with a press, the Kindle app with a double press, and return to the home screen with a long press. This lets me avoid dealing with the e-ink display most of the time or forcing it to display animations in slo-mo while I execute gestures.

If you’re expecting Kindle-like battery life from the BOOX Palma 2, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. This isn’t a multi-week device, but it’s easily a multi-day one.

Android is obviously a more powerful operating system than the basic software that runs on Kindles, and it siphons a lot more power, whether it’s idling or active. Where my Kindle can keep power for more than a month or two if I keep it idling away, the Palma 2 can make it to ten days at most before the battery runs out. With frequent usage and reading (around three hours per day), this was down to five or six days. When I went to Budapest for six days, I only charged the Palma 2 when I returned home.

I think the trade-off is more than worth it. I’d rather have a lot more power and only charge once a week on average than be limited in what I can use on an e-ink display. Having access to my favorite browser, writing app, and several ebook readers on an e-ink display that is incredibly readable outdoors and lasts a week without forcing me to worry about daily charging (and while taking some unnecessary load away from my main phone) is a huge perk. I can finally spend a couple of hours writing without seeing my Pixel dip from 50% to 20% battery, or read on a plane without pulling out the power bank to keep my phone alive. Of course, I’d still like to see Onyx take the BOOX Palma series’ power efficiency forward in future versions, but it’s on the right path already.

If there’s one hardware aspect of the Palma 2 I’d change instantly, it’d be the fingerprint sensor. It’s quite finicky and unreliable, and I say this having used the Pixel 6, 7, and 8 — some of the worst fingerprint readers in the history of Android. Somehow, this one is worse. My success rate with it is about 20%, and when it doesn’t work, I have to enter the PIN code manually.

I’m also dubious about the camera’s utility on the Palma 2. Maybe there’s a real use case where some people scan documents or take photos with it, but I can honestly say I didn’t use it more than once. Even if it shoots colored photos, seeing the black and white preview on the screen was enough to turn me off from the entire experience. If it were my money, I’d save the few bucks needed to purchase the camera module and add some RAM instead, or upgrade to a better fingerprint sensor.

And finally, I wish the customizable volume buttons worked well across all apps. I tried to make them switch pages in the Kindle app, but I couldn’t get that to work, no matter whether I chose “page-turn” or “scrolling” as functions.

Of course, I’d love to see Onyx implement a better processor, upgrade to a more reactive e-ink panel, add more RAM, and pick a larger battery for the next BOOX Palma version, but those are given for any Android device. As it stands, though, there’s very little I’d fault the Palma 2 at, and my Android Authority colleagues have heard me say nothing but good things about this little e-ink gadget. It’s the book that’s always with me, and I love it for that.