Onyx BOOX Vasco da Gama 2: The Russian-Market BOOX Nobody in the West Covers
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There is a BOOX in our collection that almost nobody in the English-speaking world has written about. It is white, it is small, it boots into Russian, and it is named after a fifteenth-century Portuguese navigator.
The Onyx BOOX Vasco da Gama 2 was built for the Russian market. Onyx has a long habit of naming devices after explorers — Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Livingstone, Darwin, Columbus — and of releasing regional variants that never appear on the English site. This is one of them.
What it is
A 6-inch E Ink Carta reader from Onyx International, sold primarily through Russian retailers. The device’s own promotional screen — which is what ours boots into, in Russian — lists the specification plainly:
- Screen: 6-inch E Ink Carta, 758 × 1024, with SNOW Field support
- Touch: multi-touch, capacitive
- Processor: dual-core 1 GHz
- Storage: 8 GB
- Front light: MOON Light
- Wireless: Wi-Fi
- OS: Android, with Google Play access
- Battery: 3000 mAh
The tagline on that screen reads «Новый шаг в эволюции книги» — “a new step in the evolution of the book.” Onyx has never been shy.
Why it matters more than the spec sheet suggests
Two reasons, and neither is performance.
The first is SNOW Field. It is an Onyx display technique that suppresses the faint residue left behind when an e-ink screen refreshes — the ghosting that shows as a grey shadow of the previous page. On a 2016-era Carta panel that was a genuinely useful thing to have, and it is a feature Kindle and Kobo did not offer at any price at the time.
The second is Android with Play Store access on a 6-inch reader in 2016. Amazon and Kobo were both selling sealed appliances that year. Onyx was selling a small Android tablet with an e-ink screen that happened to be excellent at reading. That difference is the whole reason BOOX still has a following a decade later.
What it is like to actually use
Slow, and pleasant. The dual-core processor and 8 GB of storage were mid-range in 2016 and are modest now; the interface has the slight lag every Android e-ink device has. The white plastic body feels light rather than cheap, and the physical page buttons on the right edge are placed for a right-handed thumb.
The Russian firmware is the real friction. Menus, store, and system dialogues are all in Russian on ours. It is navigable if you know where things live in an Android settings tree, and genuinely awkward if you do not.
Should you buy one?
For reading, no. A used Kobo Clara or Kindle Paperwhite from the same era costs less, has better software support, and will not present you with a Cyrillic settings menu.
For collecting, it is a different question. This is a regional variant of a brand that is now well known in the West, from a period before anyone in the West was paying attention. It is scarce outside Russia and Eastern Europe, it is cheap when it does turn up, and it is a piece of the story of how Android e-readers became a category.
That is the same argument we make about early PocketBooks and the Sony PRS line, and it is the reason this site covers them at all.
Where to find one
Realistically: Russian and Eastern European marketplaces, occasionally eBay, very occasionally a European seller who does not know what they have. Expect the listing to be in Russian. Expect no cable.
Two things to check before buying, both learned the hard way with devices of this age: the battery, which on a 2016 3000 mAh cell will be well down on its original capacity, and whether the seller can confirm it powers on and connects to Wi-Fi — an Android e-reader that cannot reach a network is much harder to do anything useful with.
The wider point about BOOX
Onyx ships more models per year than Kindle and Kobo combined, and a meaningful number of them never get an English launch at all. The Vasco da Gama line, the Magellan, the Livingstone — these exist, they were sold in volume, and English-language coverage of them is close to nonexistent.
If you are looking at BOOX generally, start with our guide to the current BOOX range, which decodes the naming scheme. For devices like this one, our rare and collector e-readers page and the used buying guide are more relevant.
