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Last fall, Amazon grabbed headlines as it debuted the Kindle Colorsoft, the first e-reader with a color e-ink screen...made by Amazon anyway. Plenty of other companies have been experimenting with e-ink for years, including Chinese tech firm Onyx International, which produced its first color e-reader back in 2020.
My point is, if you only look to Amazon for your digital reading tech, you're missing out on a ton of innovative devices from less ubiquitous companies—including my own favorite e-ink device, Onyx's Boox Palma. Originally reviewing it in February 2024, I called it the best e-reader I have ever used. But later that year, the Palma was supplanted by the Palma 2. The new version delivers the same great reading experience and a few new features, but what should be an easy choice is made more difficult due to the price difference between the two—which recently swelled to $54, thanks to President Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports.
Read on to learn whether the Palma 2's minor upgrades are worth paying a premium for.
A phone-shaped Android e-reader
Before we dive in, a little background on the Palma line. Released in late 2023, the first Palma is a familiar e-reader in some ways—it has a grayscale e-ink screen and a front light with adjustable color temperature—and a radical departure in others. Most notably, instead of the 6- or 7-inch, squarish shape of most e-readers, including Kindles and Nooks, it is a small rectangle with roughly the same dimensions as an iPhone 15 Plus.
While you can't make calls with it, the Palma operates like a phone in another important way: It runs on an open, customizable version of Android with access to the Google Play store. That means instead of being locked in to one retailer's ecosystem, you have the freedom to download any reading app you want—my own Palma is loaded up with the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo apps, plus a few more. You can also use it to listen to podcasts and audiobooks from Audible (or any other audiobook service), though you will need to change a few settings to get it working smoothly.
Beyond that, the Palma can download and run pretty much any app from the Play store, including those that feature a lot of motion, like video games and YouTube, thanks to its incredibly responsive display, relatively speaking—though still no match for an LCD display, it scrolls much more smoothly and refreshes much more quickly than the clunky e-ink screens you used years ago. You can also use it to browse the internet, tapping away like you would on your iPhone or Pixel.
In short, the Palma is a black and white e-ink reader that functions more like a full-fledged tablet. It's still got an e-ink screen, which can look a bit (or a lot) grainy when it comes to non-reading tasks, but it's certainly useable—and remember, devices like the Kindle Paperwhite can't really even be used to visit a website, let alone stream Netflix.
The Palma 2 is a minor upgrade
Debuting a little more than a year after the release of the Palma, the Palma 2 added some welcome changes, but it's hardly a revolutionary upgrade—and looking at the devices side by side, you'd be hard-pressed to tell them apart. You'll need to dive into the details to understand what's different, and decide whether it's worth it to upgrade your existing Palma, or to spend more money buying the newer model.
What hasn't changed
The list of what hasn't changed between the Palma and the Palma 2 is a lot longer than the list of what has.
Both devices offer:
The same exact look and exterior build quality.
The same 6.13-inch Carta 1200 e-ink display offering a resolution of 300 pixels per inch.
The same adjustable front light that can shift from cold blue to warm orange hues (the picture above illustrates that the original Palma's light appears a bit brighter, but I don't think you'd notice the difference if not viewing them side by side).
The same 6GB of onboard memory.
The same 128GB of storage, expandable by up to 1TB if you use a memory card.
The same 16MP rear camera that Boox claims is for scanning documents but which can also take mid photos and video.
The same decent (but not exceptional) battery life that will see you charging it about once a week with an hour or two of daily use.
The same lack of significant waterproofing (both devices are "water-resistant").
Still no SIM support
Perhaps most significantly, the Palma 2 is like the Palma in another way: There is no SIM support, meaning you can't use it as a full-fledged phone, either. Given how much both Palmas look and act like smartphones, it's understandable to think Onyx might add calling functionality to the new version, but if you want an e-ink phone, you're still going to have to turn to another Chinese company, Hisense.
What the Palma 2 offers
So what makes the Palma 2 different? There are three upgrades of note:
The Palma 2 features a fingerprint scanner, so you can unlock the device without using a passcode.
The Palma 2 runs on Android 13, whereas the Palma uses Android 11. Neither device is capable of upgrading to a newer OS.
The new device has an upgraded "octo-core" processor.
Do the upgrades make a difference?
Rather than talk a lot about the original Palma (you can read my thoughts on that device in my full review), I'll just talk about whether these minor changes are enough to justify spending an extra $54 on the newer device, let alone upgrading the Palma you already own.
The fingerprint scanner: I'm not sure I understand why the Palma 2 needs a fingerprint scanner at all, since most people will probably be using it mostly for reading rather than sensitive activities like banking, but if you've linked your Google account to download apps, more security isn't a bad thing.
The Palma 2's scanner is built into the power button on the right edge of the device. You can add multiple fingerprints to unlock it while holding it in either hand. Programming it is easy, and though its performance was pretty spotty in the months following the initial release (when I often couldn't unlock the device with my fingerprint at all), a few subsequent software updates seem to have improved things a great deal. I still think its an unnecessary barrier between me and my book, however, and I keep the feature turned off.
Android 13: The biggest failing of the first Palma is that it is limited to running on an outdated operating system, based on Android 11, which was released in 2020. While it still works fine in 2025, it has reached its effective "end-of-life" and will receive no future security updates.
Meanwhile, the Palma 2 runs on Android 13, from 2022. You won't notice much difference between the two while using it, aside from slightly different icons, the inclusion of a native camera app (curiously missing from the first Palma), and an AI Assistant app that's really just integrating an unidentified third-party LLM that seems to work about as well as the very earliest versions of ChatGPT (which is to say, not very well at all).
The upgraded processor: According to the specs, the Palma runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 460/662, while the Palma 2 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 690/750 5G. That said, while the new chip is a good upgrade on paper, it probably won't make a noticeable difference for what you're using this device for the most—I noticed no significant change in navigating my library or page turn speeds when using the Kindle and Nook apps, and my preferred reading app, Moon Reader+, performed the same on both devices as well.
What about using non-reading apps, browsing the internet, and watching video? Again, the difference is subtle, if it exists at all. With one device in each hand, I'd be hard-pressed to tell them apart. I believe the Palma 2 has a faster chip, but it just doesn't seem to affect the performance for the average use cases. If there are performance differences, they are so slight as to be nearly inconsequential.
And the winner is...
While the changes to the Palma 2 are certainly nice—particularly the newer version of Android, which you could consider a bit of future-proofing—I don't think they are significant enough to bother upgrading if you're already enjoying your Palma.
Moreover, if you're looking to buy for the first time, I'd say the $54 price difference between the two is money probably better spent on a few books. The upgrades simply aren't the sort of thing you're likely to notice, as both devices will do what they are built to do—serve up e-books—very well. Perhaps the Palma 2 is a smidge faster, but only a smidge, and it's not like the Palma lags in comparison. Both perform about the same using non-reading apps, which is to say, surprisingly well for an e-ink tablet, but not so well that I'd call the experience "enjoyable" when compared to a smartphone.
In my review, I called the original Palma a near-perfect device. That hasn't changed, even comparing it to the Palma 2. The newer version offers more, but nothing I think you need.
This comparison was originally published in December 2024 and updated in March 2025 to add additional information on tariff-related price increases to the Palma 2.
