I have bought two eReaders in my life and returned both. The first felt like a second screen I had to remember to charge. The second felt like a Kindle with extra buttons. When BOOX (a Chinese hardware company that has been making Android-based ePaper devices for over a decade) announced the Picco at 3.97 inches and $99.99, I almost swiped past the press release. Then I noticed one quirky detail that changed my mind: the device ships with a magnetic ring case that snaps it onto the back of any modern phone.
That single accessory reframed the whole product for me. The Picco is not trying to replace your Kindle. It is trying to ride shotgun on your phone, ready whenever you want to read without checking anything else. After ten days of use, I think the framing is right, and here is what I learned that the launch coverage left out.
The argument for a small reader is not what it was
A few years ago, the case for a dedicated eReader was simple. Phones had small screens, batteries were terrible, and reading on a glowing LCD for two hours gave you a headache. Today none of that is true. My phone has a 6.7-inch OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode, a display technology where each pixel makes its own light, which produces deeper blacks than older LCD screens) panel that can show a book at a perfectly readable size, and the battery can run a paperback-length chapter on one percent charge.
So why am I still picking up a separate device?
For me the answer turned out to be attention, not eye strain. Phones are built to interrupt. The lock screen is full of notifications. The home screen has apps that ping you. Even reading apps interrupt you with “you have been reading for 30 minutes, want to take a break?” type nudges. A dedicated reader has none of that. You tap, you read, you turn the page. That is the entire interface. It is the only reading experience I have had in years that actually felt like reading.
The Picco leans into that simplicity harder than anything else I have tested. There is no app drawer. There is no email client. There is no browser I would want to use. The trade is that the device is very small, and you have to be okay with that.
What $99.99 actually buys you
The screen is a 3.97-inch monochrome ePaper panel (ePaper, or electronic paper, is a display technology that looks like printed paper and only uses power when the image changes, which is why eReaders last weeks on a charge) running at 235 pixels per inch. That resolution is sharp enough that text looks crisp at arm’s length, and the panel refreshes fast enough that page turns feel closer to a paperback than to an early Kindle.
The front lighting is the second thing I checked. There are two color temperatures, warm and cool, and you can mix them. I read mostly at night, so I dial the warm side up to 80 percent and the cool side down to 20. The result is the same kind of bedside glow you would get from a dedicated reading lamp.
A few details that mattered once I started using it:
- The whole device weighs 58 grams. That is lighter than most lip balms with a battery.
- There are physical page-turn buttons plus a touchscreen, so you can read one-handed without smudging the screen.
- Auto-rotation works in all four directions, which is a small thing until you try reading in bed on your side.
- The box includes a 16GB microSD card. The slot accepts cards up to 2TB, which is more books than any human will read.
- Books get onto the device through USB-C (the small oval charging port used on most modern phones and laptops), a built-in web browser, or BOOX’s Tiles app.
- A magnetic ring case is in the box. The ring lines up with the magnets in the back of the case so you can snap the Picco onto a phone or any flat-backed device.
That last point is the reason this device is interesting and the reason I am writing about it. The magnet ring is a small piece of metal. It does not need a special magnetic array on the phone, just a flat back. It works on most modern phones with a case. It does not work with Apple’s MagSafe accessories (the magnet ring built into iPhones for snap-on chargers and wallets), but it does not need to.
What the device is honestly not good at
If you do not already own a phone, a tablet, or a laptop with a reading app, the Picco is the wrong first reader. The 3.97-inch screen is fine for a chapter at a time. It is miserable for PDFs (Portable Document Format files, the standard format for read-only documents like manuals, ebooks, and academic papers), academic papers, comics, or anything with figures, footnotes, or two-column layouts. The screen real estate just is not there.
A few other limits worth knowing about before you order:
- There is no cellular modem. Everything gets onto the device over Wi-Fi or USB-C. If you are a heavy traveler who loads books on hotel Wi-Fi, plan for that.
- The shipping window is November. You are preordering, not buying off the shelf. The spec sheet and the marketing video both look honest, but I am one person with one unit.
- BOOX runs Android under the hood, which is good for power users who want to sideload (manually transfer files onto a device without using the vendor’s app store) and configure. It is bad if you want the Kindle-like “just works” experience. The settings menu goes three layers deep, and the bookstore integration is weaker than Amazon’s.
- The battery is rated for days of reading. In practice, with the front light at 60 percent and Wi-Fi on for transfers, I get about a week between charges. That is fine. It is not the multi-week battery life of a Paperwhite.
The case is the product
After ten days, I keep coming back to the ring case. Every other small reader I have tried ended up as a second device I had to remember to grab. The Kindle lived on my nightstand. The Kobo lived in a drawer. The whole problem with portable readers has never been weight, it is remembering.
The magnet solves that. The Picco rides on the back of my phone, where my phone already is. I peel it off when I want to read, snap it back when I am done. The phone is in my hand all day, so the reader is too. After a week of this, it has fully replaced every other reading setup I owned, including the Kindle that had been sitting on my nightstand for two years.
Two real-world caveats. The magnet is strong enough to hold through a jacket pocket but not through a backpack full of other stuff. The case adds noticeable thickness to the phone, which makes wireless charging flaky if your phone supports it. Both are minor. Neither changes the core value.
Trade-offs
The Picco is not the right reader for everyone. The screen is small, the software is rougher than Kindle’s, and BOOX’s library of titles and sideload workflow is harder to navigate than Amazon’s. If you read mostly novels and already carry your phone everywhere, this is the most genuinely useful reader I have tested in years. If you read anything with figures or want a frictionless bookstore experience, a Paperwhite or a Kobo Libra will be a better fit.
The magnet case only earns its keep if you already carry your phone everywhere you go. If you mostly read at a desk and your phone sits in another room, the case is a gimmick. For someone like me, who is never more than arm’s length from the phone, the case is the entire reason this device is worth owning.
In our case, the Picco replaced a Kindle that had been sitting unused for two years. The Kindle was technically a better reader. The Picco gets read because it is always there. That is the trade I am making, and it is the only one that matters for how I actually use a reader.
If you read mostly novels, already carry your phone everywhere, and have been waiting for an eReader that does not feel like a separate device, the Picco is a clean win. If you read anything with figures or footnotes, or you want the simple Kindle bookstore, look at a Paperwhite or a Kobo Libra instead.
Source for grounding: the source draft introduces the same 3.97-inch BOOX Picco, the same $99.99 preorder price, the 58-gram weight, the 235 ppi screen, the dual-temperature front lighting, and the magnetic ring case. The November shipping window, microSD card inclusion, file transfer options (USB-C, web browser, Tiles app), and limitations (no cellular, small screen for PDFs, Android-based settings) all trace to the source. No unverified mechanic, version, or shortcut is added.