Review: Bigme HiBreak Pro 6.1-inch E-ink Phone

Review unit provided by Bigme

The Bigme HiBreak Pro is a 6.1-inch e-ink Android 14 phone released in early 2025. Price at the time of review is USD 439.

My review is based on a pre-release prototype with firmware version 1.1.8 so there are still some software issues that need to be fixed. Having said that, I've not experienced major software issues that affect operation.

Things included

• Phone
• Silicone case
• SIM eject tool
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• User manual

No charger is included, but you can use any USB charger you may already have.

Specs

Bottom line

This phone is a substantial upgrade of the Bigme HiBreak released in mid 2024.

The most notable upgrades are:

• MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processor provides even faster, smoother performance.
• Fingerprint scanner is now available
• There are now two speakers, and audio quality is decent
• Battery capacity increase from 3,300 to 4,500 mAh
• There's now support for 5G, dual SIM, and NFC
• RAM and storage increased to 8GB and 256GB, but there's no more SD card slot

The Bigme HiBreak Pro looks good and works quite well, even with the pre-production software.

The main selling point of an e-ink is it's more comfortable for the eyes when reading. The text quality however depends on which refresh mode you choose. The good looking text mode has noticeable refresh flicker or page redraw, while the fast refresh mode has text that looks thinner and "dry".

The other selling point is a side benefit of e-ink. Coloured images and videos won't look as good compared to phones with LCD or OLED colour displays, so it's less inviting to use social media that much.

So while the HiBreak Pro is more expensive compared to the HiBreak, it's also noticeably better in many ways. It's now more well rounded thanks to the fingerprint scanner, NFC, better speakers, 5G and longer battery life.

Downsides? Most are actually limitations due to the e-ink canvas and since it's still considered a mid-range phone, camera quality isn't as good, not surprising.

Design

Design of the phone looks good. Design looks like the generation of phones before the current obsession with thin bezels.

Corners of the body and display are rounded off.

I do prefer the overall white design instead of black bezels with the Bigme HiBreak.

Physical size of the phone is actually as big as those large 6.9-inch phones, e.g. Samsung S25 Ultra shown on the right. The HiBreak Pro display size is 6.13-inch.

Back of the phone has a 20MP camera that's flushed to the surface.

The included silicone case looks good and fits well.

Left side of the phone has two customisable side buttons which at the time of review using firmware v1.1.8 are not customisable yet.

Shortcuts that can be set to the buttons are:

• None
• Back home screen
• Back
• Screenshot
• Multitasking Switcher
• Clear cache
• Full refresh
• E-ink center
• Previous page
• Next page
• Light switch

I wish there's a scroll shortcut which will be very useful when scrolling webpages compared to scrolling with finger which will produce more page redraws with the higher visual quality modes.

On the right, there's a power button with built-in fingerprint scanner, and volume buttons.

All the buttons have firm clicks.

Rounded sides of the phone makes it comfortable to hold, and the silicone case has good grip.

That red thing at the top is the Infrared sensor, and nearby under the hood is NFC that can be used for credit card payment.

Bottom of the phone has a speaker, and there's also another speaker at the top. So there's stereo and audio quality is decent and does not sound too hollow. Volume could be louder though because 50% volume here is the 10% of other phones.

USB-C charging port supports 18W charging.

SIM tray can hold two nano SIM cards. There's no support for microSD card.

There's a small gap between the surface and the e-ink canvas. The photo above shows the cast shadow from edge of the display. The shadow is not distracting and not something I would pay attention to after a day.

Main thing to note is all visual content looks almost as if they are on the display surface despite that gap.

Display

The display tech is E Ink Carta 1200. For some reason, this info is not listed on Bigme's website and I found that on other websites.

The gray of the e-ink canvas is light enough and provides enough contrast with text. However E Ink Carta 1300 has an even lighter gray, and would be the upgrade I expect if there's HiBreak Pro 2.

Here's how the e-ink canvas looks without any front light in a dark environment.

The cold light has 36 adjustable brightness levels and the lighting seems quite even. I do not see any wavering light pattern at the edge of the display.

The front light seems to be at the top. Even though it cannot be seen in the photo above, there's actually light spillage between the frame and the display. So there's a thin line of light that's not too obvious or distracting, but it's there.

Warm light also has 36 levels of adjustment.

Here's a side by side comparison of e-ink vs OLED display. Advantage of e-ink is it's more comfortable for reading for long periods of time.

Anti-glare of the matte surface is quite effective. Legibility is excellent even under direct sunlight.

E-ink settings

E-ink center can be accessed by swiping down from the top right, or from the navball feature.

E-ink center allows customisation for individual apps. You can set fast refresh when using a web browser, and set better text quality but slower refresh when reading e-books.

The five refresh modes available are Default, Magazine, Comic, Video and Custom.

Custom mode has adjustments for Anti-shake (less flicker), auto clean, refresh mode (extreme, fast, regal, HD 265), contrast and full refresh frequency, DPI setting, text enhancement for icon colour and background colour.

Here's how text looks with Default mode.

With Magazine mode, text looks thicker, fuller and has better contrast and legibility. However, refresh speed is slower with noticeable page refresh, which is quite distracting when scrolling webpages.

My personal setting for web browsing is Default (fast refresh), and for reading e-books with Kindle and Libby is Magazine. The scrolling speed for Default is quite smooth and does not have much ghosting

6.13-inch is a good size for a phone. Reading text on the phone is a good experience, but not so much for reading comics since the text sizes are too small.

OS and software features

Bigme has their own UI on top of Android 14. To access stock Android settings, you have to go into More Settings.

There's Google Play Store so you can install almost any app you want.

Raise to wake can show me the notifications.

The navball shortcut allows you to customise 9 more shortcuts:

• None
• Back
• Homepage
• Open application
• Shut down and restart
• Lock screen
• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• Screenshot
• Previous page
• Next page
• Multi-task switching
• E-ink centre
• Full refresh
• Clear cache
• Page key
• Sleep
• Close the floating ball
• Navigation ball set
• Volume
• Rotation

Always-on Display or Screensaver has four options

• Show your own wallpaper
• Show notifications
• Bigme logo
• Clock and calendar

The second option to show notifications is quite useful but does not show battery life or update the clock. The fourth option that shows clock and calender does not show notifications.

At time of testing firmware v1.1.8, unlocking the Always-on Display goes to the Always-on Display settings instead of to the home screen, so this is definitely a bug that has to be fixed.

Downsides or limitations

There limited contrast with the grays. Shown above is the Google Maps app with Default refresh mode and the individual buildings can't even be seen.

Switching over to Magazine mode creates more contrast and the buildings are now slightly more noticeable but still difficult to see. Having better visual quality also means there will be noticeable distracting page redraws when scrolling.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 4,500 mAh and is considered big for an e-ink phone.

Battery life is difficult to test because you can't just run looping videos, and this phone is not made for watching videos.

Anyway, based on my usage of reading, and web browsing, the battery life can easily last for a day or two. The Always-on Display does not drain battery life significantly, thankfully.

Conclusion

The Bigme HiBreak Pro is a good phone that works well. Thanks to all the upgrades over the previous model, this feels like a more well rounded phone.

Main thing you have to know is e-ink has its limitations or compromises. You choose between better text quality or faster refresh, but you can't have both, at least with current technology.

This phone is made for people read ebooks, or just want a phone that's more comfortable to the eyes. It's also good for those who want minimal distraction from social media or videos because pictures don't look good on a BW display compared to colour display.

I'll try to update this review when the the retail firmware is out but I don't think I will have much to add except for the software issues with the two left buttons and Always-on Display settings mentioned.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ 6.13 inch 300 DPI
+ Has Google Play Store
+ 8GB RAM, 256GB storage
+ More responsive than Hibreak
+ E-ink has good contrast
+ Matte display has excellent legibility under sunlight
+ Fast refresh (depends on mode)
+ Decent audio quality, volume is low
+ Comes with case
+ Dual 5G SIM
+ Has GPS, gyroscope
+ Great battery life
+ NFC, Infrared
+ Fingerprint unlock
+ There's haptic feedback
+ Android 14
- No SD card
- Front light spills out from frame of phone
- Limited grayscale contrast
- Left buttons not usable with firmware v1.1.8

Availability

The Bigme HiBreak Pro is available from Bigme online store, currently at USD 439 at time of review.