Boox’s new smartphone-sized e-readers come with a steep price hike

The Boox P6 Pro, which has a slightly better 6.13 inch black-and-white Carta 1300 E Ink display than what the $300 Palma 2 used, is priced at 2,799 Chinese yuan, or around $393. The P6 Pro Color, which uses a 6.13-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 color screen, similar to what you’ll find in Kobo’s color e-readers, is even pricier at 3,299 CNY, or around $463. Boox is offering launch discounts for both devices that brings them down to 2,516 CNY/$353 and 2,991 CNY/$420, respectively, but because of US tariffs, they could end up being even more expensive if and when they launch here.

Both devices feature 128GB of storage that’s expandable to 2TB using a microSD card, a 16MP camera, 3,950mAh batteries, and run a version of Android 13 customized by Boox. The P6 Pro Color includes a bump in RAM from 6GB to 8GB, and supports the use of a stylus for note-taking. The most compelling upgrade is that these are Boox’s first compact e-readers to include a SIM card slot for accessing 5G mobile data. But unlike the Bigme Hibreak Pro that launched earlier this year, the P6 Pro models aren’t designed to be smartphone replacements with calling capabilities, making that price hike a tougher sell.