I increasingly find myself drawn to digital books, though how enjoyable they are depends entirely on the device that I read them on.With the rise of phone-sized eReaders, I decided to pit one up against another reading-focused option, a book-centered phone.An eReader the size of a phone You may know of the BOOX Palma, but have you tried the DuRoBo Krono? Close Traditional eReaders imitate paperback books.
They tend to have six or seven-inch screens, and they're ever-so-slightly too big for a baggy pants pocket.Amazon Kindles have completely dominated this market for decades.Now a newer crop of eReaders are here that don't try to replicate the physical size of a book at all.
They instead are shaped like the device all of us now carry with us and that a younger generation has grown up with, the smartphone.The most popular of these is the BOOX Palma, which sold well enough to not only see a successor, but for that follow-up to come in two variants—the BOOX Palma 2 and Palma 2 Pro.The BOOX Palma 3 is on its way, and it comes with pen support.
BOOX isn't alone.I briefly owned a Palma, and I have more recently been sent the DuRoBo Krono, an eReader of roughly the same size.While the Palma is largely just a smartphone with an E-Ink screen and no cellular modem, the Krono does try to do a few things differently.
It comes with a text-only launcher somewhat reminiscent of Niagara Launcher.It also has a physical scroll wheel on the right-hand side of the device.This wheel can perform several different functions, from turning pages to adjusting the backlight.
Differences aside, these devices have the same fundamental strengths and weaknesses.Both have E-Ink screens that are ideal for reading text, though I find that words don't look as sharp as they do on larger eReaders.Both devices also feel cramped to me as someone more accustomed to reading books on my book-style foldable or the larger BOOX Go 10.3.
I might be willing to deal with that small size if this device were the only one I carried in my pocket, but it isn't.Despite being the size of phones, they aren't intended to function as one, which means having to carry two separate devices.That, for me, has consistently proven a deal-breaker—despite how happy I am to see E-Ink come to all the things.
I'm not going to carry two phone-sized devices in my pockets, which means I need to have a bag on hand to carry at least one of them.If I'm going to do that, then the eReader might as well have a larger screen.A smartphone that doubles as an eReader TCL makes phones with LCD screens that pretend to be paper Close If you love the idea of an E-Ink phone, they do exist.
Your best option is currently the BigMe HiBreak Pro, which comes in color or black and white.Due to the current limitations of color E-Ink screens, I can't tell you that one version is inherently better than the other.What I can say is that BigMe's software feels more like an enthusiast project intended for Chinese users rather than a finished product.
I bought one with high hopes but ultimately sold it (BigMe's return policy is so time-consuming and costly that I didn't bother).TCL makes a phone that tackles this challenge from a different direction.Instead of an E-Ink screen, the TCL NXTPAPER 70 Pro has an LCD screen that mimics paper.
Sort of like what Samsung has done with the Frame TV, this phone has a reflective matte display that is more easily readable in direct light.This makes the phone better for ebooks out of the box, but that's not the whole story.There's a button on the right-hand side of the phone that enables the NXTPAPER mode.
This allows the screen to mimic both a color E-Ink screen and a black and white one.I'm most fond of the color version, which results in a phone that still functions as normal, albeit with muted colors.The black and white mode does come with an added benefit—it greatly extends battery life by disabling most of your apps.
This mode is ideal for someone in search of a distraction-free minimalist phone that doesn't require sacrificing essential apps like banking and accessing public electric car charging networks.At the end of the day, an LCD screen is still backlit, and it's not going to be quite as pleasant to read on as E-Ink.Still, the experience is better here than on a conventional phone, and it strikes a happy middle ground.
If the choice is between carrying two devices or one, I'd rather go with one.I still highly recommend a book-style foldable instead As good as both of these devices are, at the end of the day, I still come back to reading on my book-style foldable.I get to have more screen space for words without having to sacrifice portability.
The cost is significantly higher than that of either a BOOX Palma or a TCL NXTPAPER 70 Pro, but with the right trade-in deal or second-hand purchase, foldables aren't as pricey as you think.
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