Boox Palma 2 Pro Review: Slightly missing the point

Connectivity 

• Support for 5G connectivity
• Still no Phone or SMS apps
• Works well with third-party apps

Neither of the first two versions of the Palma had a cellular data connection. And so they always felt quite limited. 

You could download offline books and documents onto them to read when out and about. But if you wanted to use messaging or communication apps to stay in touch with people while you detoxed from your proper smartphone, you had to be connected to a Wi-Fi network. The Palma, then, has never really been a phone. 

With the Palma 2 Pro, that’s changed – at least a little. It’s still not a phone, but it does now have a slot for a SIM card in its removable tray, as well as space for a microSD card for storage expansion. 

There’s still no phone or SMS functionality baked into the device, but because it runs a relatively modern version of Android, you can install apps like WhatsApp or Telegram and use them to communicate over a data connection, much like you would with another Android or iPhone. 

For those of us who do 99% of our communication over WhatsApp, it more than functions. The 5G connection will keep you connected, even when you’re not hooked up to Wi-Fi. It also means you can use it to navigate in Google Maps when necessary to find your way around. 

Design 

• Phone-like form factor
• Textured back is nice and grippy
• Customisable Smart Button

If there’s anything I wish Boox would update more than just adding phone functionality, it’s the design. It’s fine, and is vaguely smartphone-shaped, but the uninspired heavy use of plastic and the chunky bezels mean it’s hardly at the cutting edge of premium minimalism. 

Still, there’s practicality to it. The textured back – which feels like it’s been designed to mimic textured wall render – means the phone is grippy and is very unlikely to slip from your palm. It’s pretty lightweight too, and the generously curved edges mean that despite being quite large, it’s comfortable to hold and use one or two-handed. 

Otherwise, there’s not a huge amount to say about it. There are three buttons dotted around the edges. One is the power/wake button which also has a built-in fingerprint sensor. I’ve not found it to be the most responsive or consistent sensor in my testing, and so often had to rely on my passcode or pattern for unlocking. 

Then there’s the Smart Button on the side. As I’ve mentioned, it refreshes the display when you press it once, but it can be customised to do any number of things. You can assign different functions for a double press and a long press, including launching specific apps or functions like the camera or document scanner. 

It’s only mildly water-resistant and should survive light splashes, but that’s about it. It’s not designed to resist submersion or jets of water, so if you end up getting one, I’d very much recommend keeping it dry.  

Screen

• 6.13-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 colour screen
• Still not great for video
• Stylus support, but it doesn’t come in the box

This seems contradictory, but the newer display panel is both better and worse than the previous one. Where the previous two models both had black and white displays, this one is colour. 

It’s still E Ink. And the limitations of E Ink still apply, in that it’s slower to refresh than AMOLED or LCD, and not particularly bright or vibrant – and so it’s terrible for any fast-moving content like videos and gaming. It’s why these minimalist devices have any sort of appeal.

Even if you wanted to install TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or any other addictive social media app on it, the experience is so bad that you wouldn’t want to watch for more than a couple of seconds before giving up and deleting the app. 

It’s really designed for anything text-based. Think reading ebooks, or documents. But the upgrade to colour has also meant a bit of a downgrade to the experience at the same time. This is the contradiction. 

Colour adds visual appeal, and means things like app icons and book covers, or images in books, look more attractive. But at the same time, if you look at the display side by side with the previous black and white model, you’ll notice the contrast and visibility aren’t anywhere near as good. 

Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not all that laggy for the things that matter. Typing on WhatsApp, for instance, is a pretty care-free experience. I made a few typos due to my unfamiliarity with the pre-installed stock keyboard and the lack of haptic feedback when a key is pressed, but it was quick enough to type on that I didn’t feel hampered. 

Swiping to switch home screens, or tapping to launch an app, is pretty quick as E Ink goes too. And there are settings you can change to adjust the contrast, clarity and refresh rate. So you can make it smoother to animate, or have the details look clearer. Usually, picking one of those means less of the other, but the fact that you can change it when you like to suit the app you’re in is a bonus. 

And if you ever get content burnt in or stuck on the page, as happens frequently with the slow-refreshing E Ink displays, you can press the side key once to fully refresh it and clean up the details again.  

As well as a colour screen, the Palma 2 Pro also hides another important upgrade: it now supports stylus input. So with a compatible Boox InkSense Plus pen, you can markup and sign documents and screenshots, making it just that little bit more useful. 

Sadly it doesn’t ship with one in its standard package, but you can buy a bundle which includes the pen for a little extra. The InkSense Plus is roughly the same length as the mini tablet and is encased in aluminium, so it’s pretty durable and features a Type-C port on the side for charging. 

Pairing is pretty easy once you know how. Simply plug it into a charger, navigate to the stylus connection menu in the Settings and tap the display with the pen. And when you need to make handwritten notes, it’ll work automatically. 

I mostly found it useful for scribbling quick to-do lists or shopping lists. It’s lag-free and precise enough to make it pretty convenient, and it definitely adds something to the experience. It never felt slow, didn’t stutter and felt mainly about as natural as you can get for a stylus on an E Ink display. I was pretty impressed with its reaction speeds. 

One of the things I most appreciate about the display is the front light customisation. You can adjust the brightness and the temperature, but more convenient is the quick panel for toggling preset settings. 

The ‘Bright’ preset increases the brightness and coolness of the light. ’Soft’ is designed for nighttime, decreasing brightness but increasing the warmth. There’s a custom option which you can set yourself, where ‘Auto’ automatically adjusts based on your ambient light levels.  

Software and features

• Runs Android 15 with Play Store support
• Thousands of apps are available to download
• Baked-in AI app

You might not know it from looking at the software, but the latest Palma runs Android 15. The interface has, of course, been heavily tweaked to work on an E Ink display. But there are some modern Android staples here. 

You get the Play Store preloaded so that you can download almost any app you want. Personally, I kept it pretty minimal in terms of the additional downloads. I downloaded audio apps like Pocket Casts and Apple Music, as well as my usual messaging apps: Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. And, of course, the Amazon Kindle reader app. 

With those installed, I can keep up with all my communication channels, read the books I want, listen to podcasts and music, but not get sucked into social media.

Boox has its own preloaded apps too. There’s a basic camera on the back, which you can use to take photos or use the document scanner app to scan and save documents for later. There’s also a voice recorder for saving voice memos to the device. It’s even got a browser and a calendar app, so you can definitely keep up with all of your productivity tasks. 

It’s pretty flexible in terms of what you can use it for, but again, the E Ink display does limit it slightly. Any apps that rely on rich graphics are best left uninstalled. Even the camera app is a bit of a waste given the state of visuals on the screen. It’s far too dim and pixellated to make it worthwhile, but, in an emergency, it’s helpful in being able to snap something for remembering later. 

Perhaps curiously, there’s a built-in AI app called AI Assistant that you can ask questions much the same way you’d use ChatGPT. For instance, you can ask it to recommend books to read based on your favourite titles and it can give you recommendations, or you can ask it to create a to-do list. 

Battery Life 

• Battery life varies wildly
• Can last anywhere from 2-3 days to over a week

Battery life is a difficult thing to judge with an E Ink tablet. A lot of it depends on how much you use the Palma 2 Pro and most crucially on the front light and screen refresh settings. In short, the brighter the light and the smoother you set the refresh, the more the battery will drain. 

People who use the device a lot, with the light always on and with lots of page refreshes could probably drain it in 2-3 days. But those who use it as more of a secondary device to take time away from their phone – with the light off during the day – could make it last up to a week, maybe even two weeks. It varies a lot.

Personally, with my pretty light usage, I could easily get through a week on a full battery. 

Should you buy it?