Kindle vs Boox: A Review
Jan. 20th, 2026 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penwallaAmazon deciding that you could no longer download your Kindle books was the last straw for me, and I have not bought an e-book from them since. But what to do with my Kindle e-reader? I loved my Oasis, don't get me wrong, and initially I was just going to keep it and sideload books on it as needed. But then it started glitching, and I figured...time to pick up something else.
Now my requirements for an ereader were pretty simple: I wanted to be able to store all my ebooks on one device, regardless of where I bought them, I wanted something about the size of my old Oasis, and I wanted physical page turn buttons. This eliminated a lot of the devices on the market. I also decided against a color e-ink device--I've read mixed reviews of the technology and I'm not reading comics or graphic novels on my e-reader anyway.
I ended up buying the BOOX Go 7.
Why this device? Well, besides meeting all the above requirements, it meant I wouldn't be locked into any one ecosystem, and with the Koreader app I could sync with Calibre, meaning all the time I've spent tagging books in Calibre would finally come in handy.
Is it better than the Kindle?
Frankly...no. I still think in terms of ease of use, the Kindle is a better device. You can literally just pick up your kindle and start reading. The battery life is really good, putting books on it is really easy, and I like the collection system a lot. In comparison, the battery life of the BOOX, while fine, is not as good as Kindle's. But mostly, it's just a device that requires a lot more work than the Kindle did. I had to spent hours of my life figuring out how to use Koreader, download Koreader, and then set it up. If you don't care about how your files are organized then it can be a plug and play device. If all your books are stored in other apps and you're fine just using the BOOX to load the Kindle app or the Kobo app or whatever, I think that'll be fine, too, though I have not tested how optimized those apps are for e-readers.
But for me it definitely feels like it's a lot more work to read on the BOOX. The actual experience of reading text on the screen is perfectly fine, and it's very easy to adjust things like the margins or the font size, but the experience of opening the app and finding a book to read is not great. Even with the ability to search by Calibre tags and the ability to sort books into Collections, I still don't like it! In addition, the app sometimes crashes, and if you don't exit Koreader after using it sometimes won't save your work.
Koreader is pretty robust, but it's not at all intuitive. I didn't like the app the BOOX comes with and honestly, I've tried out a couple other apps and didn't like any of them, either. If someone wants to make a free e-reader app that has the exact Collections view Kindle has, please, hit me up. I need it.
All that being said, I can't support Amazon's business practices and I'm not going to spend money on ebooks that they can take away at any time, and I also hate not having physical buttons, so ultimately I'm going to keep fiddling with my Go 7 until I find a setup that doesn't make my brain itch.
Kobo didn't have any of the devices in stock that I was looking for, which is why I ended up with the BOOX Go 7, but I think that might be a more user-friendly option if you're looking to transition away from the Kindle.
Now my requirements for an ereader were pretty simple: I wanted to be able to store all my ebooks on one device, regardless of where I bought them, I wanted something about the size of my old Oasis, and I wanted physical page turn buttons. This eliminated a lot of the devices on the market. I also decided against a color e-ink device--I've read mixed reviews of the technology and I'm not reading comics or graphic novels on my e-reader anyway.
I ended up buying the BOOX Go 7.
Why this device? Well, besides meeting all the above requirements, it meant I wouldn't be locked into any one ecosystem, and with the Koreader app I could sync with Calibre, meaning all the time I've spent tagging books in Calibre would finally come in handy.
Is it better than the Kindle?
Frankly...no. I still think in terms of ease of use, the Kindle is a better device. You can literally just pick up your kindle and start reading. The battery life is really good, putting books on it is really easy, and I like the collection system a lot. In comparison, the battery life of the BOOX, while fine, is not as good as Kindle's. But mostly, it's just a device that requires a lot more work than the Kindle did. I had to spent hours of my life figuring out how to use Koreader, download Koreader, and then set it up. If you don't care about how your files are organized then it can be a plug and play device. If all your books are stored in other apps and you're fine just using the BOOX to load the Kindle app or the Kobo app or whatever, I think that'll be fine, too, though I have not tested how optimized those apps are for e-readers.
But for me it definitely feels like it's a lot more work to read on the BOOX. The actual experience of reading text on the screen is perfectly fine, and it's very easy to adjust things like the margins or the font size, but the experience of opening the app and finding a book to read is not great. Even with the ability to search by Calibre tags and the ability to sort books into Collections, I still don't like it! In addition, the app sometimes crashes, and if you don't exit Koreader after using it sometimes won't save your work.
Koreader is pretty robust, but it's not at all intuitive. I didn't like the app the BOOX comes with and honestly, I've tried out a couple other apps and didn't like any of them, either. If someone wants to make a free e-reader app that has the exact Collections view Kindle has, please, hit me up. I need it.
All that being said, I can't support Amazon's business practices and I'm not going to spend money on ebooks that they can take away at any time, and I also hate not having physical buttons, so ultimately I'm going to keep fiddling with my Go 7 until I find a setup that doesn't make my brain itch.
Kobo didn't have any of the devices in stock that I was looking for, which is why I ended up with the BOOX Go 7, but I think that might be a more user-friendly option if you're looking to transition away from the Kindle.
