Android e-readers sound perfect on paper, but they can't replace my Kindle

Published Sep 14, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT I've been covering Android and other mobile technology for close to ten years now, with a specific interest in phone accessories, e-readers, and what makes each individual phone different from another. I delight in looking at the phone market from as many angles as possible, and while my opinions may be odd, at times, they're always from the heart as much as the head. I have a background in the mobile accessories world, which explains my odd enthusiasm for cases and things that clip onto smartphones. I worked for Digital Trends from 2017 to 2025. If you want to buy a device to read e-books, you broadly have two options. An e-reader with an E Ink display, or a smartphone or tablet with a regular screen. A dedicated e-reader is usually better for reading, while a regular device can do more and still read well enough. But why not an E Ink device that also runs Android? Several Boox devices run Android while also using an E Ink display. On paper, it's the perfect solution, and everyone should be using them. Except it's never that simple. I have a few Boox devices, and no matter how much I want to love them, they just don't work for me. Boox's e-reader should be the perfect e-reader All the right elements are there I love e-readers, but I hate e-reader apps. To be clear, I don't generally hate the apps. I hate that if I want to read my Kindle books, I need the Kindle app; to read my Black Library books, I need the Black Library app, and so on and so forth. This isn't a problem on my phone. I can download whichever app I want. But on my Kobo e-reader? I can't download the Kindle app, so outside some ... legally gray options, I won't be enjoying my large Kindle library on my Kobo. But then, in waltzes the Boox Go Color 7. It has an E Ink display, so it's as comfortable to read as any Kindle or Kobo e-reader, and since it runs Android with the Google Play Store, I can download and run any reading app available on Android. I can even download the Shounen Jump app and read manga. On paper, it's the perfect device. Access to Android means I'm not limited to whatever books I buy from Boox, and I can swap between apps whenever I want. It has a speaker, so it can run Audible, and since there's a web browser, I can use it to browse the internet too. The E Ink display's low refresh rate means I won't be watching any videos or playing any games on it — and I've tried — but that's not a bad downside for my ultimate e-reading machine. The logic is there. I can see how it all comes together. It just doesn't. Every time I've used my Boox e-reader, I always come away feeling vaguely disappointed. Barely a jack of all trades It loses to a master of one, every time Take a look at a Boox device's spec sheet, and you'll notice they're more powerful than competing e-readers. The Go Color 7 has a 2.4GHz octa-core processor and 4GB of RAM. Compare that to the Kobo Clara Colour's 2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, and it's clear the Boox device is dramatically more powerful. Does that make it enormously speedier than the competition? No. It needs that extra oomph because Android is harder to run than the proprietary operating systems running on regular e-readers. Android is resource-hungry, so Boox devices need higher specs than competitors. If anything, my Boox Go Color 7 is slower than most other e-readers I own. Opening an app takes seconds, and while it's generally faster when you're in a reading app, it's still slower to open an e-book than my Clara Colour, Kindle 11th gen, or Xteink X4 Pro. The software situation also doesn't help. Boox does an excellent job keeping the software updated, but its version of Android doesn't handle some reading apps well. Take Games Workshop's Black Library reading app, for instance. It's beyond buggy on my Go Color 7, to the point where I've had to give up trying to use it. Credit: Amanz / Unsplash This is a new app from a company that isn't known for reading apps, so you might assume it's the app's fault. But it's only buggy on the Boox device — I've never had a problem reading on my phone, even on my unfolded Z Fold 8. I'm not saying it doesn't work. It does work. It just works better on other devices. And that's where my frustration comes in. My Boox is e-reader hardware running on smartphone software, and while that sounds great, it makes for some weird situations. The Kindle app is the best example. Turn the page, and it's a weird, stuttering mess. That's because the Kindle app is tuned to work with a display running at least 60 frames per second. But my Boox display runs at less than that, so it misses frames and the animation doesn't work properly. It's not a big problem, but it always left me feeling like the page turn hadn't worked, and it was always disorienting. You can solve this problem by turning off animations in the app, but it highlights how much my Boox experience is a half-experience. Not as good as a smartphone or tablet, but also not as good as an e-reader. It's sat in the middle, and worse than both. It's not a bad experience, just subpar But that's even worse You can live with this experience. If I wasn't in this job and didn't have a bunch of other e-readers lying around, I probably would. My Boox Go Color 7 isn't a bad device. It works fine, it feels great, and I have a lot of fondness for it. It's not as good as my other options. And that's somehow even worse. Because it means I'm always wondering whether I could make it work. It didn't work last time, but maybe this time, if I did this and tried this...? The cycle repeats endlessly. It's close to being exactly what I want, and because it isn't quite there, it's somehow more annoying than if it were just terrible. Because I'm always thinking about how I could make it better. Maybe one tweak will bring it to where I want it to be. But so far, it hasn't been. So it's goodbye for now, my Boox Go Color 7. I'll see you in another year or so, when I decide it's time for another shot at e-reader perfection.