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Boox Leaf 2 eInk Reader Review
Jason Snell, on Six Colors:
[…] I’ve been using a $200 Boox Leaf 2 e-reader on and off for the past few months. It’s a 7-inch reader that’s sized and priced more like a standard Kindle or Kobo. I’m happy to report that in the intervening months, the Boox software experience has improved—but a device like this is still probably not a good idea unless you are comfortable tinkering with Android apps and utilities.
I’m seriously considering the Book Leaf. I bought a Kindle Paperwhite 6.8in, when it came out and it has been… meh. I thought the bigger screen would be an upgrade over the my Kindle Voyager, which I still keep in my bag. Every time I read for a while on the Voyager and return to the bigger Kindle, it feels too big and I miss the buttons. Both hardware issues the Leaf 2 addresses.
I’m a bit weary of moving away of the Amazon ecosystem, mostly for sync. I like picking up a book on my iPhone and iPad. Also having all highlights flowing to Readwise. However, there’s the Android application option on Boox:
The Kindle app on Android is actually pretty good, and works well with the Leaf 2 once you get it up and running. But if you use the page turn buttons too soon after you launch it, the Boox software won’t have kicked in yet and you’ll get a volume prompt instead of a page turn. And don’t swipe or tap to turn the page, or you’ll get a page-turn animation that can’t be turned off or properly rendered by the E-Ink screen.
Sounds okish, but not great. Specially when I think of the main reading app I’d like other than Kindle, Reader. Which according to reddit posts, is functional, but not great:
I’ve been using Reader on my Boox Leaf 2, it works surprisingly well considering its not optimised for e-readers yet. If you’re launching the app from cold it can take 20 - 30 secs to load but you would typically be loading from memory so that’s no big deal
I’ve been down this rabbit hole before, so not sure where if I’ll really make the jump. But it’s fun to window shop a reading devices1.
Don’t ask about the reMarkable2 as a reading device.↩︎