The Bigme B1 Pro is a 10.3-inch Color eink Tablet/e-reader with note-taking capabilities which was released in China only in December of 2020. Since all the sources are in Chinese it’s a bit hard to get the full details of this device. Below are some of the info I’ve been able to gather on this e-reader.
The screen is 10.3″ with a resolution of 1872x1400 pixels. It has a 32GB internal memory, is powered by a Quad-Core 1.8Ghz processor and runs on Android 8.1 (most probably without Google play services- I hope am wrong though).
The Bigme B1 does have frontlight with 32 levels of brightness. It is powered by a 4000mAh battery that boasts a standby time of 90days. It connects and charges through a USB-C port. Its dimensions are 232.5x191x7.7mm and weigh 440g.
An interesting feature is its ability to take notes with speech using its dual-microphone. Check the video below to see this for yourself- it’s quite impressive. I hope it works for the English language too for the benefit of buyers from outside China.
The device comes along with one smart pen, a data cable, one pen charging cable, manual, warranty card and one cover. It is available in JD for 4999 Yuan which comes to around $770 – quite pricey for a 10 inch tablet but color eink screens are more expensive than the monochrome ones so its understandable.
Eink color Tablets using the Kaleido screen tech came out last year but they were limited to only 5.84″ and 6″ in size such as the Hisense A5C and A5 Pro CC phones and the Onyx Boox Poke 2 color, iReader C6, PocketBook Color and iFlytek C1 ereaders.
E-ink (the company) did state in late 2020 that bigger sizes of the Kaleido (or Print color) screens would be available soon. So if Bigme has received the 10″ panels then am sure other companies such as Onyx Boox, Boyue Likebook etc. have received them too and are probably working on color versions of their 7.8 and 10.3 inch models even as we speak. Let’s hope they’ll be able to keep the price around 600$ for their 10″ models.
By the way the Bigme B1 is using the 2nd Gen Kaleido technology which is superior in color clarity to the 1st gen.
It’s only January and already so many amazing eye-caring tech products have been released. I think 2021 is going to be an exciting year for eink and RLCD lovers out there.
What I am really looking forward to in terms of displays are e-ink displays with high(er) (and dynamic) refresh rates. Something like the TCL NXTPAPER thing, I think you mentioned in a recent post. The first gen did not seem to be quite there, but to me that’s much more exciting than even colour.
do you mean the 2nd Gen of Kaleido (Print color)? Am not sure if this one uses that. There are rumors that the upcoming Hisense a7cc will have it though. We’ll have to wait and see.