Boox recently added a new e-reader. Called Palma, it has an “eye-friendly” e-paper display and has been circulating online recently. At $280, it’s significantly more expensive than Amazon’s $100 base Kindle model, so I had much higher expectations for it than I did for the Kindle. But I’m afraid it doesn’t do justice to its price.
Brooks Parma
It’s trying to do too many things at once.
advantage
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solid body
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Huge, expandable storage space
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Long-lasting battery life
shortcoming
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No dark mode
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No 3.5mm interface
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Aspect ratio makes it difficult to read
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Interface lag
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Boox Parma Design
Easy to store.
The most important thing you need to know about the Palma’s design is that it feels like you’re holding an iPhone in your hand. It measures 6 x 3 inches and looks almost identical to my old iPhone 12 Pro Max. This 2:1 aspect ratio is quite different from the 8:6 aspect ratio on the Kindle.
I love how portable the Palma is. Weighing only 170 grams, it feels comfortable and light in your handbag. I took it to a few places and back and forth to and from work for about a week, and it didn’t burden my office. It has a slim 8mm profile, a plain plastic body and a rugged appearance. Although my Palma came with a protective cover, I don’t use it. I tried it for a few minutes but quickly gave up on it because it added weight, made using it less ergonomic, and felt unnecessary. Although the Palma is small, it feels quite sturdy and doesn’t require additional protection. The back of the device has a paper-like look to it, which I love.
While I like that the Palma doesn’t feel flimsy enough to require a case, I do have some concerns about the lack of waterproofing and how it could lead to disaster if a spill occurred. The company claims its e-readers are “waterproof,” but they’re not. Compare that to the Kindle’s IPX8 water resistance rating, and you realize what a huge drawback this is.
The right side of the Palma houses the power button and volume rocker, while the left edge offers an SD card slot and customizable function buttons. The buttons are nice and clicky, and I like how they add a little sparkle to an otherwise bland chassis. The function button is intelligently designed and can perform up to three operations: 1) short press, 2) double click, 3) long press. These actions include taking screenshots, putting Palma into sleep mode, going to the next page, previous page, and more.
The bottom of the e-reader has a Type-C charging port and a pair of speaker grilles. To my pleasant surprise, the speakers were excellent. While sharp and pointy like most phone speakers, they’re loud enough to fill a moderately sized room. I like to put the Palma on the kitchen shelf and listen to podcasts while I cook. The sounds of my cooking, as well as the thunderous sound of the kitchen exhaust, were drowned out by Parma’s speakers.
I’m also pleased with the impressive speakers, since Palma doesn’t offer a 3.5mm port for wired audio connections. So your only two options are Bluetooth and speakers, and I mostly found myself choosing the latter. If I were a driver, I could also see myself listening to audiobooks on speakers in the car. If I ever consume content that cares about audio, I’ll switch to a good pair of headphones.
Boox Palma features
Outdated operating system but huge storage space.
Android 11 powers Palma, considering that we are now on Android 15, which is very outdated in terms of operating system. Thankfully, the operating system won’t significantly impact readers’ daily functioning. However, if you want to use Boox more When using a tablet, you may find that an outdated operating system limits your app compatibility.
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The processor is Qualcomm octa-core 2GHz, with integrated graphics, 6GB of memory, up to 128GB of storage space and an SD card slot. Amazon’s Kindle is 64GB, so 128GB is immediately impressive. That’s even better considering it’s expandable via a memory card slot, we just haven’t been told how many GB that slot can offer at most.
The light powering the E-Ink Carta 1200 display on the Palma is called Moon Light 2, and is responsible for illuminating the device with an eye-friendly, soft glow. The 6.13-inch screen provides 300ppi and 824×1648 dots resolution. I know the 6-inch size sounds a bit too tall for an e-reader, and a bit too phone-like.
You also get a 16MP rear camera with LED flash. The flash can also be used as a very bright and useful flashlight when you swipe down on Palma and tap the Control Center icon. However, this camera won’t meet your photography needs. It is only used for scanning files.
Boox Parma Experience
Not good at browsing
To access my books, I had to download the Kindle app from the Google Play Store and sign up for (and pay for) Kindle Unlimited. It cost me about $12 a month, but it was easy to set up. A week into my current read, Sarah Gruen’s Water for Elephants, and I feel like this device is torn between wanting to be an e-reader and a phone. Personally, the 2:1 aspect ratio just doesn’t work for me. It’s too small on each page, so it requires a lot of scrolling and page turning, which can be easily avoided with a more book-like form factor. I tried making the book a little smaller to fit more text on one page, but that was also uncomfortable, so I went with a font size large enough for my eyes.
The touch sensitivity isn’t quite as good as a smartphone or tablet, but it’s not bad either. It did have to be re-tapped a few times when I hit it too lightly out of habit, but for the most part it was fine. To turn pages, I lightly tap or swipe the right part of the screen.
One of the features I look for when I get any device is dark mode, so it’s strange that I can’t find a dark mode setting. Throughout my testing, I felt like something important was missing, like I hadn’t quite gotten used to this new device. I contacted Palma to ask if I’d missed it, and they confirmed that the mode didn’t exist yet.
In addition to the Palma’s e-reader functionality, I believe it requires more processing power to perform other tasks effectively. You have the browser and Play Store at your disposal, which means you can download games, YouTube, Netflix, or any other app you don’t mind interacting with on a black and white e-ink display. But there’s enough stuttering and lag in day-to-day browsing that I can’t imagine using it for light gaming. I sometimes experienced pixel distortion when scrolling down, typing was sometimes confusing, the display kept glitching, and it didn’t seem like it was fast enough to keep up with my workflow.
One of the biggest issues with Palma is pixel persistence. I experienced severe image retention, where I would see very obvious images from the previous page retained on the next page. This is a very common problem related to OLED displays. Whether typing on the Palma or switching between websites, it’s clear that the device just isn’t fast enough. Navigation improved when I switched to the “Ultra Fast” refresh mode of the four offered (HD, Balanced, Fast, Ultra Fast), but still not enough to provide a smooth, stutter-free browsing experience.
While the camera does a decent job of capturing images, the OCR feature is poor and I use my phone to scan and read documents. If I were to use Palma for this job, I would have to make quite a few corrections to the OCR results.
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In terms of gestures, I found the Palma easy to get used to. it copies Many gestures from iOS, such as swiping right from the left side of the display to go back or enabling the navigation ball in Settings, work exactly like Assistive Touch. Of course, it also retains many Android features, For example, a bottom navigation bar with icons such as “Home”, “Back” and “Recent”.
The Palma’s battery life is very good. It took less than two hours to fully charge, and then it stopped freezing at all. Every day, I check the percentage at the end of the day’s use and it drops slightly. If you use it every day for reading and browsing, its 3950mAh battery can easily last a week and a half.
Boox Parma Verdict
Trying to wear too many hats.
Parma tried to excel in many areas but ended up failing in some. If it had stuck to being just an e-reader, it might have been a more impressive device and ideally cost less. From the looks of it, it seems like it’s trying to be a phone. Functionally, it wants to be a tablet. If the price was cheaper, I would accept this hard work attitude. But for the hefty price of $280, I don’t want to pay for features I never asked for or that don’t perform well. On top of that, there are some glaring flaws, like no waterproofing, no dark mode, and 3.5mm ports, that I just can’t get over when you’re spending around $300.
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