Customer Ratings & Reviews

I really wanted to love the BOOX Palma, I really did. On the surface, it hits every check box: use whatever book apps I want? Check. Huge amounts of storage? Check. Easy to add files by just plugging it into a computer? Check. Those promising ideas break down pretty badly in actual use. The ancient, stripped-down version of Android running on the device is slow, buggy, and not at all suited to use as an e-reader. Apps (I tried using Kindle, Kobo, Libby, and Nook) are a mixed bag. Kobo is dreadful - it takes forever to turn a page, if it even recognizes the swipe, and refreshes the entire screen every time it does. Kindle crashes five to ten times before it decides to stay open, but reading is generally pretty tolerable. Nook worked the best, but is still nowhere near as responsive as it should be. Even IF the swipes worked every time (which they don't) and even if the volume buttons can be used as page-turn keys (a feature that has never, not once, worked for me) reading on this device is still a frustrating exercise thanks to its smartphone-like aspect ratio. Despite being slightly bigger than the Kindle paperwhite, Barnes and Noble Nook, or Kobo Clara, the elongated aspect ration means you're fitting less text on screen, swiping more, and more, and more... Apps with dark UIs (like Spotify) are almost unreadable, and multitasking is a chore. Switching apps is a slow, frustrating process with a lot of missed gestures and accidental taps. You probably don't want to tax this thing too hard, anyway. The battery barely makes it through a single book (with the light set to 10%) which is... somehow so shockingly bad it actually baffles the mind. How does an e-ink display (with no backlight) last for less time than a budget smartphone? Which brings us, finally, to price. If this were $100 or $150, I could almost forgive these failings, but for $280? They're inexcusable. Even the 128gb of storage and 6gb of RAM shouldn't bring the price up that high. BOOX could have easily omitted the entirely superfluous camera and saved a few dollars. It's another baffling decision in a device composed entirely of baffling decisions.

While I love to have all of my books from different apps in one place with the ereader white screen, the functionality and interface is not worth the price.