Onyx Boox is a popular brand of Google Android e-readers and e-notebooks. They have two markets for releasing new hardware: the domestic Chinese market and the international market. Each year, they are very busy refreshing most of their product line; sometimes it’s just a small spec bump and a new version of Android. They rely exclusively on hardware sales and do not monetize the software experience. What do they have planned for 2026?
Hardware
Onyx Boox will likely release the Palma 3 e-reader, building upon their most successful model of all time. In 2025, they released the Palma 2 Pro with a Kaleido 3 color e-paper screen, but the Palma 3 will have a black-and-white screen and cost under $300. They will also update most of their GO series of tablets with a new version of And…
Onyx Boox is a popular brand of Google Android e-readers and e-notebooks. They have two markets for releasing new hardware: the domestic Chinese market and the international market. Each year, they are very busy refreshing most of their product line; sometimes it’s just a small spec bump and a new version of Android. They rely exclusively on hardware sales and do not monetize the software experience. What do they have planned for 2026?
Hardware
Onyx Boox will likely release the Palma 3 e-reader, building upon their most successful model of all time. In 2025, they released the Palma 2 Pro with a Kaleido 3 color e-paper screen, but the Palma 3 will have a black-and-white screen and cost under $300. They will also update most of their GO series of tablets with a new version of Android, likely 15 or 16. Expect refreshes to the Tab XC, Note Air 6, and Note Air 6C.
Onyx has been teasing a smartphone for years and has been slowly testing new models. The Palma 2 Pro has a sim card tray for data connections only and cannot make calls. Bigme offers several black-and-white and color e-paper smartphones, and seems to be the only current brand selling them. Will Onyx BOOX release a new model to compete against them?
I do not see the company releasing any new monitors in the Mira series; they seem to have given up on it, and they haven’t been available to order from the BOOX online store or Amazon. It is hard to compete in this segment because Dasung tends to have a stranglehold given its specialty.
Onyx Boox is slowly moving away from WACOM screens and gravitating towards EMR. Most of their 2025 devices were only compatible with the new BOOX Pen3 Stylus, which has 4,096 Levels of Pressure, Tilt Sensitivity, and Ultra-low Latency.However, some models were only compatible with the new Inksense stylus too, the Note Max was the only outlyer with full WACOM support.
Software
Onyx Boox e-readers and e-notebooks all run Google Android as their core operating system, and none run Linux. If you have an older BOOX model from 4-5 years ago, it might be challenging to download current-generation apps from Google Play, since most flagship apps gradually lose support for older versions of Android. This is why buying an Android e-reader can be a challenge, unless you expect to always buy a new model every couple of years. The big selling point of each generation of BOOX products is always a more recent version of Android; most of the stuff they released in 2025 was Android 14 or Android 15. Likely in 2026, Android 16 will be the standard.
However, it is important to note that Boox has a custom skin called BOOX OS, so you do not get a vanilla Android experience. This results in many of the core Android features and enhancements not being noticeable on BOOX products, like they would on a Pixel Phone.
Onyx Boox tends to only release a few software updates a year, and they tend to offer beta versions of it for their community to test it and see if there are any glaring bugs, before it’s released to all users. Onyx tends to support only its current-generation devices first, then push them out to the previous generation, and nothing older than that. They never update older models with a more recent version of Android, either.
Michael Kozlowski
Michael Kozlowski has written about audiobooks, e-books and e-readers for the past eighteen years. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.