Box Palma 2 Pro review: One step forward, one step back

Model after model, model after model, the Box Palma gets that little bit closer to my dream device. Onyx, the company that makes it, has found a formula that remains simple and delightful: it’s a gadget about the size of a smartphone, with access to the full breadth of Android apps, but with an e-ink screen that gives the Palma a much more focused existence.

My Palma is almost entirely for four things: reading (via Kindle and Reading), listening (via PocketCasts and Spotify), notes (via Mind and Workflow), and controlling my Roku TV. Palma can do a lot of things, but it only does a few things well. And the battery life is very good.

On paper, the new Palma 2 Pro ticks all the boxes at first. The new $399.99 device is the most expensive Palma yet, but also easily the most high-tech. Most importantly, it has a SIM card slot to add cell connectivity. It also has a color screen, a new version of Android, more RAM, stylus support, and a bunch of new software features. This might be the most minimalistic device we’ve been waiting for.

After testing the device for a while, I’m sorry to report: it’s not. The idea is a good one, and the SIM slot and pen support both make the Palma useful in new ways. But one of the device’s “upgrades” is actually such a major downgrade that I immediately found myself using the Palma 2 Pro less than any of its predecessors. This is such an obvious problem that I cannot recommend buying this device at all. Buy a Palma 2 instead. Or just wait a bit, and hope Onyx figures out how to give us all the right features at once.

Let’s just do this first: the problem is the screen. The Palma 2 Pro has a 6.13-inch, color screen, based on e-ink’s Kaleido 3 technology. Kaleido 3 tech is a few years old, and it’s basically a color filter layered over a standard black and white e-ink screen.

You can find Kaleido 3 screens in a lot of gadgets, none of which look amazing, but many of which look okay. The tech comes with some inherent drawbacks, most notably its resolution—150PPI is half as sharp as modern black-and-white ink screens. And its brilliance. Amazon’s Kindle is based on the ColorSoft Clado 3, to name just one example, but Amazon rebuilt the entire display stack to make it faster, brighter, and more accurate. Amazon was very clear that it didn’t believe Kalido was good enough on its own.

Amazon was right. The Palma 2 Pro’s screen is a mess. It’s so dim that I have to turn up the device’s brightness much higher than previous models just to see text on the screen. The low pixel density makes any small text essentially unreadable, and it still feels vaguely out of focus even when I’m just reading text on a blank background. From what I’ve noticed, it feels like the Palma has fiddled with (many, many, many) display settings, and still can’t get it to the point where I like it to look.

And for whom? Sure, the Palma 2 Pro renders things in color, but those things look more like impressionistic paintings than sharp photos. It’s supposed to support 4,096 colors, but practically turns most things into some weird brand of rust red. The screen is relatively fast, which makes it fun to pan and zoom around comic book pages, but the ghosting effect is very rough and everything just looks blurry. In all my testing, there hasn’t been a single time that I’ve been glad to have this color screen instead of the sharper, brighter, more pleasant black-and-white panel on the Palma 2.

It’s a shame that the screen is such a deal-breaker too, because the SIM slot is the best thing that’s ever happened to a Box Palma. I bought a $20 prepaid data-only SIM card, popped it into the slot on the bottom of the device, and never thought about connectivity again. Since you’re unlikely to use the device for a lot of video streaming, a little data goes a long way, and automatically updating my reading lists and podcast queues with the latest ones has solved a few of my problems with Palma living.

I use the Palma like a combination iPod/Kindle, but the addition of cell connectivity means you can use the Palma 2 Pro as a phone. It’s surprisingly decent: the microphone sounds great, although it’s not great at canceling out background noise, and the speaker isn’t great but certainly good enough.

The Palma Phone may not be a phone for calling (although some business users prove otherwise), but you can easily use the calling features of any messaging app. I’m not sure I’d recommend this or any e-ink phone as an iPhone or Pixel replacement, but the Palma 2 is a great backup phone or weekend device. And maybe, since it’s everything And The Kindle replacement, priced at $400, is a little easier to stomach. May be.

So there’s the worst thing about the Palma 2 Pro, and the best thing about it. Everything else is par for the Palma course. It still feels a bit plasticky and fragile. It’s still the same benchmark as the midrange phone from four years ago, and while the numbers are slightly higher than the Palma 2, I don’t really notice the difference. The camera is more for scanning QR codes than making memories. The battery still lasts the better part of a week.

There are small but still nice upgrades. It has 8GB of RAM and runs Android 15, both of which bode well for the device’s overall longevity. . It’s not the best stylus experience ever, but it works.

In addition to a wide range of customization options, Box offers a specific set of built-in apps for reading, file sharing, and a few other things. You can safely ignore them all, as I do. The AI ​​assistant app is a bit more spotty and hard to ignore, and threatens Palma’s entire non-secret existence. With a little work, though, you can still turn it all off and get back to the things you want to do.

Ultimately, like many of Palma-Onyx, Many Other Box Devices – All these parts are quite a combination. The company doesn’t do a lot of in-house component development or come up with big new software ideas. Instead, these parts and spec sheets are constantly remanufactured to try and find the right mix for the right device. The Palma collection (smartphone, e-ink, play store) is an excellent one. Data connection optimizes all three segments. Also a color screen. But not this one. He sent me straight to Palma 2. It’s black and white, and it only works over Wi-Fi, but at least it’s nice to look at.