Review: Bigme PocketNote B751C colour e-ink tablet

The Bigme PocketNote B751C is a 7-inch colour e-ink tablet with a Carta 1200 e-paper display targeted at people who prefer a compact lightweight device for reading digital books.

The retail price is USD 269 and that includes the pen, case and one year warranty. Lowest price in Singapore I've see is SGD 329 (originally SGD 399). Purchase links are at end of the review.

The pricing is quite competitive when compared with the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Colorsoft selling at USD 279 that comes with 32GB storage, no case, no pen, and no Google Play Store. The Bigme tablet is more versatile since it can read Kindle ebooks too with Kindle app installed.

Bottom line

The Bigme PocketNote B751C works great as an e-reader. This is primarily for reading text, not so much of comics or PDF because a 7-inch display will give you small text sizes. I read PDFs and comics occasionally so I definitely prefer a display larger than 7-inches.

One big selling point is Google Play Store that lets install any reading app, e.g. Libby, Kindle, etc.

Overall performance is smooth as long as you're not loading a huge PDF file.

Downsides. The gray of the e-ink canvas can be dark but you can use the front light to compensate for that.

Battery life is okay and something difficult to test. If you're just reading digital books, then battery life is good. If you have surfing the web, have front light on, all that will affect battery life.

Specifications

• Screen: 7-inch Kaleido 3 E Ink screen
• Resolution: 1264 x 1680 (B/W), 632 x 840 (Color)
• Screen Density: 300dpi (B/W), 150dpi (Color)
• Frontlight: Yes, with adjustable color temperature
• CPU: 2.3 GHz octa-core
• RAM: 4GB
• Storage: 64GB, expandable via microSD card slot
• Battery: 2300mAh
• Operating System: Android 11
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0
• Ports: USB-C
• Weight: 140g
• Dimensions: 155 x 136.2 x 7mm
• Other Features: Fingerprint scanner, speakers, microphone, G-sensor, ceramic tip, waterproof
• Software Features: Google Play Store, Kindle support, handwriting search, handwriting conversion, insert shapes, insert images, split screen, custom templates, screen share, ADE support
• File Formats Supported: PDF, EPUB, EPUB3, DOC, DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTML, FB2, CBZ, CBR, OEB, AZW3, MOBI, PRC, TXT, ZIP, PNG, JPG, BMP, WAV, MP3

Things included

• Tablet
• User manual
• Warranty card
• Card tray ejection tool
• Two replacement pen tips
• Pen tip remover
• Case
• Pen
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable

No charger is included but you can use any phone charger.

The flip case features leather-like surface on front and back. It's a well made case except the cover can move easily. Pen is attached to the front cover's holder.

This is not magnetic case so to remove the tablet you have to unhook from the four corners. It's not difficult but not as convenient compared to a magnetic case. There's auto sleep and wake feature.

The included pen uses one AAA battery, so this is probably using USI technology.

Design

Design of the tablet is clean and simple. Display is 7-inch so this is a compact and very portable tablet. Weight is just 140g. Even with the case on, it's not that heavy.

On the left you can find one speaker and the USB-C charging port. Speaker audio is loud enough but sounds hollow, which is not surprising. Since the USB-C port is by the side, the case has to be opened to charge the tablet.

MicroSD card slot is located at the bottom, and power button's located at the top on the opposite side. There's no fingerprint unlock.

You can choose a left-tab tool bar home screen or the more common typical app-focused home screen.

Two side buttons can be customised to turn pages, scroll or adjust volume. Those buttons don't work with all apps though. E.g. I could not turn pages with the xReader app when reading CBZ files.

The edges of the displays can be customised to change brightness or warm light and it works really well.

Auto-orientation works fine.

That's the anti-glare on the matte surface but you'll still want to avoid reflections on the display.

Resolution of the display is 1264 x 1680 at 300 DPI for BW. Text looks sharp enough but there's some grain from the Carta 1200 colour e-ink canvas. Should above is the quality from Default display mode, the Magazine display mode looks better.

The gray of the e-ink canvas is slightly darker compared to just BW e-ink tablets.

There are 36-levels of adjustable brightness for the front light. There is slight glow on the side nearer to the buttons but otherwise the lighting looks even enough.

Warm light has 36 levels of adjustment too.

Eink Center has several display modes that affect visual quality of the colour and refresh time. I did not test all the settings as I just switch between the preprogrammed modes, namely Default, Magazine, Comic and Video. You can create a custom setting too.

Default mode shows slight grain and colours look alright. Refresh is quite responsive. This is the best compromise between visual quality and page refresh responsiveness.

Magazine mode shows cleaner colours with no noticeable grain unless you look real close. Refresh will have page flashing (two times) which can be distracting.

Comic mode increases the saturation and contrast, has noticeable ghosting (image retention) and page flashing.

Video mode has less saturated colours, more grain, faster refresh.

These are extra e-ink settings.

Here's a normal sRGB colour wheel.

Colour e-ink has its limitations as shown here with the colour wheel. The saturated colours look alright, but the lighter values (colours closer to the centre) are sometimes indistinguishable from colours beside, also sometimes the colours are off, e.g. lighter greens look like yellow or orange. And there's a whole circle of lighter colours missing in the centre.

BW comics has slight grain and the black is certainly not as clean as totally BW e-ink tablets.

As mentioned earlier, 7-inch display is not ideal for comics and PDFs because you cannot adjust the text size like you can with ebooks with flowing text.

I noticed when loading huge PDF files, there is occasional lag when turning pages or navigating (pan, zoom, rotate). CPU-Z app lists the processor as MediaTek Helio P35 which has 8 cores at 2.3Ghz. I don't suppose that's a powerful processor from the performance I see, but for an e-reader it's adequate, as long as you don't load huge files. When you're just reading flowing text from e-books, performance is fast.

The tablet comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. When many apps are opened, some apps would not remain in memory.

Writing and note taking

Pen has to be powered on before it can be used. The pen supports pressure sensitivity and palm rejection.

Not sure what the first button does but the second button (away from pen tip) is an eraser with the default note taking app.

Writing performance is mostly affected by latency. When writing, you can see the line chasing the pen tip. So writing experience is not ideal. Overall, the tablet is still able to capture my handwriting style, but my handwriting does not look as good compared to writing on more responsive tablets.

The default note taking app has quite a number of features and tools.

The display is not totally laminated so there's still a little gap between the line and pen tip, but this is a minor issue.

The matte surface provides a subtle tactile writing experience.

When writing with Microsoft OneNote, the lines will appear thin first before the actual style of the line is updated. Bigme has this feature to reduce the latency while writing with third party apps. Without this feature, latency would be even more noticeable.

Glitches

When switching display modes with Kindle app, display mode may not work when you access the Eink Center buy tapping the middle of the Kindle app (which will show the book pages to flip through). Alternative is to swipe down in the full page view rather that tap in the middle.

Conclusion

The Bigme PocketNote B751C is a good e-ink tablet that works well. There are some minor downsides but no major dealbreakers. I just wish it has a fingerprint scanner which would be so convenient. Having Google Play Store is very useful.

Pricing seems reasonable when compared to other products.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ Comes with case and pen
+ Case has auto wake and sleep
+ Lightweight, compact, portable for one-hand usage
+ Quite responsive, except when loading huge files
+ Colours look good with minimal ghosting, page refresh lag
+ Has Google Play Store
+ Brightness sliders are easy to use
+ Battery life is good for just reading
- Pen & note taking performance not ideal
- 7-inch is not ideal for comics and PDFs
- Case cover moves a lot
- No fingerprint unlock
- Case has to be opened to access USB-C port for charging
- Speaker is loud enough but sounds hollow

Availability

The Bigme PocketNote B751C is available from Bigme online store, Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP)