Boox Palma 3 adds stylus support and aluminum design at $339.99

Boox has announced the Palma 3, the latest generation of its smartphone-sized black-and-white E Ink reader. According to The Verge, the device arrives almost two years after its predecessor and pairs a redesigned chassis with a handful of new capabilities, headlined by support for an active stylus.

A new shell around familiar hardware

The most obvious upgrade is physical. As The Verge reports, the Palma 3 is wrapped in an anodized aluminum frame with a fiberglass backplate designed to feel like paper. The screen, however, is carried over unchanged: the same 6.13-inch, 300ppi E Ink Carta panel used by earlier Palma models, a design The Verge notes is now several years old.

The internals are similarly familiar. The reader runs on a Qualcomm Q-6690 octa-core processor with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, expandable via microSD. Rounding out the hardware are a 3,950mAh rechargeable battery, a 16-megapixel rear camera and a fingerprint reader built into the power button.

Stylus support and a fresher Android

Functionally, two additions stand out. First, the Palma 3 ships with Android 16, a notable jump from the Android 11 and Android 13 releases found on the original Palma and the Palma 2, and just one version behind the newest edition of the operating system.

Second, the device supports Boox's InkSense Plus active stylus, a capability previously seen on the color-screen Palma 2 Pro. With a stylus attached, the pocketable reader can double as a digital notepad inside whatever note-taking app the user prefers. The stylus is not bundled, though; it costs an additional $46.

A higher price for a refined package

The Palma 3 is priced at $339.99, a $60 increase over the $279.99 launch price of the Palma 2 in 2024. Availability has not been pinned to a firm date; The Verge reports only that the device is expected to go on sale soon.

Adding the stylus pushes the total toward $386, which, as The Verge points out, brings the combined cost into the territory of premium e-note tablets such as the Remarkable Paper Pure.

Why it matters

The Palma line occupies a narrow but distinctive niche: a full Android device sized like a phone but built around an E Ink screen rather than an OLED panel. The Palma 3's upgrades are largely iterative — the same display, similar internals — so the higher price buys design and features rather than a leap in performance or readability.

The addition that most changes the product's character is stylus support. It turns a pocket reader into a pocket notebook, something few devices this size can manage, and gives Boox a clearer answer to dedicated e-note tablets. Whether the $60 bump and the optional $46 stylus are worth it will depend on how much a buyer values writing by hand on a device that otherwise handles the same tasks as its cheaper predecessor.