So earlier this Summer I pulled the trigger on a new eReader. Awkwardly, not one I'd been coveting for some time, but one that looked like it might be a better over all use case for me. For some background, I've been a Kindle fan for.. quite some time. Though my Kindle Oasis was long in the tooth, it had served me extremely well. It was the most recent I had picked up in a long line of Kindles. Part of this is because I have a small fascination with eInk. It's easily one of the most interesting display techs around still. Sure with OLED the pixels themselves are what glows, but with eInk the display itself is as close to paper as you can get. I've also coveted the idea of color eInk for about as long, but well. That's also been ridiculously pricey for quite a while. A lot less so these days! Enter BOOX. They've got a number of color tablets and readers that been reasonable in price. The idea of them essentially being Android tablets at heart too means you're not limited to what's on a single digital storefront. Hell, you're not even limited to reading books at that point. So a couple of their color tablets have appealed for a while, but honestly it's hard to justify them when I have a really nice iPad that can do EVERYTHING I need it to do. It's on the big side at 13", but it's still a pricey investment for another device that doesn't really have a missing niche to fill, even if it might do a small one better. So.. enter a Palma 2. This thing is slick. A super portable form factor that makes it easy to carry around with you. All the other perks of a BOOX reader, on a super crisp black and white display. Kinda the perfect travel companion to read on. Sure I could do that on my phone still, but this makes for a great dedicated device with minimal distractions. (Being full Android, sure you COULD load it up with apps and get bombarded with notifications, but that really seems contrary to the spirit of the device. Great that you have that option, but absolutely not what I'm going for here.) This, I could justify. I also figured it might make it easier to put off picking up another reader. That would be a mistake, but this purchase absolutely was not. For the unfamiliar, the basics of BOOX's deal is that you get an eink device running Android. Making it effectively an Android tablet with access to the Google Play store and just about anything else you might want. The Android version lags behind, you're probably only gonna sit on the major version you pick it up at. Though Google has made that less of a big deal out of necessity of their ecosystem. They come with a lot of tweaks around use of the eInk display, a customized launcher focused on reading and note taking for the tablets with pens, and a built in reader that's genuinely solid for reading books in open formats like epub and pdf. Since you have access to the Play store, you have easy access to any storefront reader apps like the Kindle app too. The Palma 2 delivers on this promise all the way, though the device is on the smaller side and in an aspect ratio and form factor more befitting a phone. For reflowable text especially it's absolutely perfect. Far from ideal for a PDF, but I mostly got this for things in Kindle/epub form to begin with. That all being said, the Palma 2 is easily my favorite eReader of all time now. So the downside is this had the opposite of the intended effect. I ultimately wound up picking up a color eInk tablet from BOOX. I was so impressed with their build of Android and their hardware that I folded and picked up a Note Air 4C. Which has been a mixed bag. I'm still trying to sort out what the best use cases are for me. It's as I feared, not as easy to justify when I can pick up my iPad for a lot of the same things. The variation of color eInk it uses is contingent on color filter layers which means the screen itself really benefits from the front light being cranked up a fair bit. Which means the blacks especially are not all that.. black. Which really shows hard in contrast next to the OLED display on my iPad. It does include a lot of controls to make PDFs easier to read on it. Automatic cropping to the text, automatic contrast enhancement. All in all pretty damn impressive. On top of all the cool stuff the Palma does, along with pen support for notes or marking up documents. At this point the pros and cons have me a little unsure how much use I'm gonna get out of it. Still figuring out when is the best time to pick it up vs the iPad or the like. Though it does have the big benefit of being substantially lighter and easier to hold one handed for prolonged periods. It too, is rather pretty. Here are some comparison shots of the thing. Contrasted with both the Palma and iPad Pro. [[Air 4C and Palma Lock Screen Comparison.png]] [[Air 4C and Palma Comparing Text.png]] [[Air 4C and iPad Pro Comic Comparison.png]] [[Air 4C and iPad Pro RPG PDF Comparison.png]] Again, still not sure where I'm gonna land here. It's not the slam dunk fall in love experience I had with the Palma 2 that caused me to fold and grab this. But it's super cute, and also easy to decorate with stickers. ![[Air4CBack.png]] As of right now though, I can't endorse picking up a Palma 2 enough if you're shopping for a new eReader easy to carry with you where ever you go. It's the perfect size to carry with me to work, and was an ideal travel companion when I flew out to see my boyfriend the other weekend. As another perk, it's quite a looker. Stickers help too. ![[Palma 2 Front.png]] ![[Palma 2 Back.png]]