Last week Onyx unveiled a new phone-sized E Ink device with a color E Ink screen called the Palma 2 Pro, and it’s now available to order from Onyx’s official Amazon store for $399.
Shipping is free and it’s shipped by Amazon so the standard return policy applies. The release date was originally set for November 7th, but now Onyx is showing November 14th on their website, and that’s the earliest shipping date estimate on Amazon as well.
The Palma 2 Pro is the first Palma model with a color E Ink screen, and it’s also the first to have a SIM card slot, although it only supports data so it can’t actually be used as a phone unless you’re using something like Google Voice.
The Palma 2 Pro is also the first Palma to support stylus input. It doesn’t come with a stylus, unfortunately, but you can use USI 2.0 styluses, and some are pretty cheap. Onyx sells their own InkSense Plus stylus, but it always seems to be out of stock.
If you don’t like color E Ink and don’t care about the SIM card slot and stylus support, Onyx is still selling the Palma 2 for $269. I used to think it was overpriced but that sounds a lot more reasonable now compared to the Palma 2 Pro.
I still haven’t figured out how the price of the Palma 2 Pro is $130 higher than the Palma 2. Onyx’s color models are usually only slightly more expensive than their BW models. For example, the Go 7 Color is $30 more than the Go 7 BW, and when Onyx added stylus support to the 2nd gen models they only increased the price by $10. So why are they now charging $130 more for the new Palma when all they added was a SIM card slot that supports data only and they bumped the RAM from 6GB to 8GB?
Another thing I don’t understand is Onyx’s inconsistent naming schemes. On their website it’s called the Palma 2 Pro. On Amazon it’s Palma2 Pro. It’s also odd how they don’t have the word color in the name, or at least a “C” like literally every single one on their other color models. Why didn’t they just call it the Palma 3? There were far fewer changes when they went from the Palma 1 to the Palma 2 when basically all they did was add a fingerprint sensor. Onyx is a hard company to figure out sometimes, but at least they offer a wide variety of E Ink devices.
{yawn} I didn’t see anything wonderous in the article. My cellphone cost less and does more and it came with a stylus.
They really should have included a stylus at that price.
Well, adding a SIM tray is not just “adding a SIM card”. I guess they had to redesign the whole motherboard to accommodate it PLUS adding a mobile connection chip, it’s a cost as well and rather significant one normally. It’s not like they’ve just activated functionality which was previously disabled because of absence of SIM tray. Regardless, I can’t grasp the idea of a use case for this type of device in its form factor TBH.
Bigme manages to sell full-fledged E Ink phones for as little as $249 so it just seems like Onyx is overcharging for this one. If they would’ve included a stylus or made it an actual phone it would be a different story.
I would only imagine that they’ve became too confident in their brand power…. and seems like now they have a proper marketing budget, suddenly in my youtube feed they popped up with the presentation (under that account ebooks or anything of this topic shouldn’t appear at all)
$250 for Android 11 and it’s a black/white screen? Nah.
For the price, it should have two different features: an aluminium body (like the Note Air 5c) and a stylus included.
In any case, I see too many drawbacks in this device. I think it’s absurd that they haven’t included a phone function. Without that, the device loses all meaning for me.
I’ll wait for the Palma 3.