A new phone-sized E Ink device called the Durobo Krono has hit the market, and it’s kind of like a watered-down version of the Boox Palma 2. It’s selling for $279 from the Durobo Amazon store, the same price as the Palma 2, and it’s available in white and black.
It’s like they took the Palma 2 and copied all the main features, while removing some of the extra hardware componentes and making a few design tweaks, with the questionable addition of an oddly large knob wheel that sticks out of the side with a large lump on the back—that alone makes it look not very pocket friendly.
It has the same 6.13″ 300ppi Carta 1200 screen as the Palma 2, and it has the same 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage space, minus the microSD card slot. The battery is the exact same size too at 3950 mAh. It also uses an octa-core CPU but they don’t give any specifics on it.
The Durobo Krono runs Android 15 and they say it comes with Google Play, but obviously it’s not certified, and it doesn’t appear to have any app optimization settings like Onyx’s and Bigme’s Android devices so that will inevitably lead to lots of ghosting issues.
It has onboard AI assistant called Libby AI, which has nothing to do with the “Libby” library app so that’s bound to lead to some confusion. Apparently the people in charge have never heard of Libby before, which is a bit concerning for what is supposed to be a new reading device.
It’s good to see more portable phone-sized E Ink devices hitting the market, but I’m not sure about this one. There are some obvious red flags, and the Palma 2 seems superior in just about every way. The only problem is Onyx seems to be phasing the Palma 2 out at this point, as it’s out of stock most places, but there’s probably a new version about to get released.
There are some reviews on YouTube for the Krono, and I tried watching a few of them, but they all felt like paid ads to me so I refused to watch them. It makes me hesitant to trust this company right off the bat. I’ve really grown tired of the compensated reviews scene; if you don’t like a product enough to buy it with your own money you shouldn’t review it. Simple as that.
Durobo has some videos on their channel that are at least somewhat informative. Here’s an overview video of what features are on the new Krono device:
Durobo Krono Introductory Guide
What do you think? Would you be willing to give the Durobo Krono a chance?
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