November 27, 2021 by Michael Kozlowski 2 Comments
Bigme B1 Pro Plus is the first 10.3-inch digital note-taking device with E INK Kaleido 2 electronic paper panel, which can display thousands of different colors. It is compatible with all major EMR/WACOM styluses and is fully equipped with a pressure sensitivity of 4,096 degrees. Even more impressive is that this device is running Android 11 and is available in English. This makes it completely relevant to anyone in the Western world who wants a top-notch writing board. You can draw and annotate in side-loaded e-books, comics, magazines, newspapers and PDF files. This makes it not only suitable for people who need professional-grade business tools, but also very suitable for the education market and graphic designers.
The color panel has a resolution of 117 PPI and can display more than 4,000 different color combinations. The resolution of the black and white panel is 1872 x 1404 and 226 PPI. There is a front-illuminated display and color temperature system with 36 LED lights. The light distribution is very good and uniform, and there is a software-based slider that allows you to control the white or amber LED lights individually or at the same time. The hardware color is white, and there is a thin black stripe on the left side of the frame. There are four microphones at the top. The back of Plus is black with beveled edges.
Bigme is a brand involved in color, since the technology first came out in early 2020. The company released two products, Bigme S3 and B1 Pro. E INK Kaleido 1 is used for all these devices. Bigme B1 Pro Plus is the world's first 10.3-inch color electronic paper using Kaleido Plus (Kaleido 2). The main benefit of this generation is that grayscale uniformity has been significantly improved, so the background will always be gray instead of trying to mix colors together to create gray. It has better color accuracy, and the color gamut is increased by more than 3 times. This means that for large screens, colors can be better integrated with each other, which has a huge impact on documents with heavy images.
You will mainly use the free stylus included with your purchase to interact with various drawing applications and edit documents. It is larger than most plastic stylus pens. It has a detachable cover and you can charge it via Micro USB. When the stylus is activated, a small LED light bar will light up. This stylus is really unique, because it has a manual page turning button on it, so you can click forward or back, and it is fully compatible with stock reading applications, as well as third-party applications, such as Amazon Kindle. This is basically done via Bluetooth, and the pen needs to be connected to your Bigme. This pen has a pressure sensitivity of 4,096 degrees, and the screen has anti-palm touch technology. The nib can usually be used for a few months, and you will get 4 extra nibs after purchase.
Under the hood is the ARM Cortex A55, which has a quad-core 1.8 GHZ CPU, 4GB of memory and 128 GB of large internal storage. No SD card, but with so much storage space, do you really need more? It uses USB-C to charge and transfer files when plugged into a computer. Thanks to the huge 4000 mAh battery, you should get about 2 weeks of battery life. It comes with Android 11, but there is no app store, so you have to load it on another app store or on an app-by-app basis. There are a series of pre-installed writing applications that can draw freehand or take notes. There are four microphones available for voice communication applications such as Whatsapp, Facetime or Discord. The microphone is designed to take advantage of the Bigmes AI platform, which can convert speech to a text system, which is very suitable for audio dictation. Speaking of audio, there are two stereo speakers on the back, near the bottom. You can load your favorite music by the side, or install applications such as Audible or Spotify to listen to audiobooks, podcasts or music. If you don't want to disturb anyone, there is also Bluetooth 5.1, so you can easily pair wireless headphones or earbuds.
It is rare to use E INK Kaleido 2 with an English e-reader or e-notebook. The first is the Pocketbook InkPad Color, which is a dedicated e-book reader with 300 PPI and a 7.8-inch screen, with a retail price of US$285. Onyx Boox Nova 3 Color has the same screen and resolution, but the main selling point is that it is an electronic note, so it is designed to draw, take notes and edit documents. The price of this model is slightly more expensive, at 399.99 US dollars. Bigme B1 Pro Plus is the third, it has the largest screen of all screens, which makes it unique. However, it requires an arm and a leg, and it currently retails for $1299.99 in the Good e-Reader Store. This makes it almost out of reach for ordinary consumers, but the device is aimed at professionals.
Bigme B1 Pro runs the Android 11 operating system and is light-skinned, so all Bigme electronic notes basically have the same UI and software functions. When you set it up for the first time out of the box, it has several Chinese languages, as well as English. This is the first time Bigme has released an English-language device, and they seem to want to sell it to a wider audience. However, they are only sold in China, so there are not many retail stores outside of China, and good e-readers seem to be the only ones.
If you choose English, basically the entire software experience will be flipped to this, UI, menus and all programs can be easily read. The only thing we found that is not in English, is the sharing feature in sideloaded content, such as books, magazines, comics, newspapers, or PDF files. If you click Share, a bunch of Chinese stores will appear in the stock reading app. We found that this was originally meant to be shared via social media, only in China. Therefore, you can forget to share what you are reading on Facebook or Twitter, but who is really doing this?
One of the advantages of Pro Plus is that you can draw anything, and the process is very simple. If you load an e-book and touch the screen with a stylus, you can underline, write on the margins, and highlight. On the top UI, you can choose 15 different colors. This is not only for people who like to keep track of things as they read, but it is also ideal if you belong to a book club, grade essays, or edit company or legal documents. You can then save the book with all edits in the same format. The only thing with a different format is the main note-taking application, which is mainly used for hand-drawing, speech-to-text, etc. You can save these notes as PDF or PNG. We tried some other note-taking applications, such as Evernote and Onenote, but found that the delay in drawing was completely unbearable.
The first thing you might want to do is to access the settings menu. You can establish a WIFI network, pair Bluetooth accessories, language settings, data and time, sleep timeout, check firmware updates and run various calibrations of the Smart Pen, and even control the operations you want the side buttons of the pen to perform. By default, the pen has a home button, an eraser, and a forward and back button, which makes reading an e-book like a walk in the park. Generally, for e-readers, you must tap the screen or perform a swipe gesture. The Bigme stylus can control page turning by simply clicking the stylus. I can't think of other products that can do this.
There are several different speed modes on Pro Plus that can significantly improve performance. The default mode is HD mode, which provides you with the best image quality and works well with all inventory applications. If you plan to do some internet browsing or run some light applications, you will need to use speed mode, which is basically A2 mode. Normal mode is the middle ground between HD and speed mode. These are global settings, but if needed, you can make sure that a specific application or program opens in a specific mode.
If you swipe down from the top, a drop-down menu will appear with many useful settings. You can set the mode you want, control the brightness of the headlight and color temperature system, control the volume, Miracast, take screenshots, and refresh the whole page.
The software experience seems to be really exquisite. all is well. Some of the features I really like is the ability to kill all background processes, which helps to extend battery life. Speed mode can better listen to Spotify, YouTube Music or Audible, because it greatly reduces latency. You will not be able to really watch the video, mainly due to the limitations of E INK, although you can run applications and light games.
If you plan to spend your iPad Pro or iPhone 13 Pro MAX money on the E INK writing pad, then you do it because you want a product that can take notes, has a long battery life, and is comfortable for your eyes. It has 15 different colors that you can use when drawing or editing. They are purple, light blue, lavender, dark green, yellow, orange, pink, sky blue, blue, green, red, light gray, gray, dark gray, black and white. There are more colors that can be selected and displayed than Onyx Boox Nova 3 Color.
When you open the writing application, the UI is at the top. You can choose writing tool, eraser, undo/redo, insert text, insert photo/clip art, choose one of 40 background templates, save or create another page. Only a few settings are truly relevant to freehand drawing. One is a writing tool, you can choose between pen and pencil, each has a slider to control the thickness of the line, and the other is a color palette. There is no hierarchy, this is a professional-level feature attached to the Remarkable subscription or Supernote series. When the stylus is placed on the screen, the writing delay is very low. Everything appeared within 20 milliseconds. You can easily spend hours and just paint the colors.
You can insert text in the app or use four microphones to convert speech to text. The AI system is ok, but not very good. There are many simple grammatical errors, it does not use any punctuation. I found this to be more of a gimmick than a basic function that everyone will use.
One of the other benefits of this device is the hardware, which is ideal for large PDF files. Page turning speed is lightning fast, even for 900 MB files. You can easily draw, underline, highlight, and write in margins on the entire document. You can also use options such as zoom, rotate landscape/portrait mode, crop, contrast, and even control reflow to control PDF files. The PDF file is really good, and the color accuracy is very reliable. This is one of the best PDF writing experiences you can find on any electronic note anywhere.
This makes a very capable e-reader. With the stock app, you have all the normal things you can find on almost all other e-readers on the market. You can adjust the text size, font type, alignment, margins, etc. The unique thing about Bigme is that it can draw directly on the books next to it. You can do anything with the stylus, just like your fingers. The page turning button on the stylus makes turning pages easier.
Bigme B1 Pro Plus is basically the only 10.3-inch large writing pad or electronic note using E INK Kaleido 2 electronic paper technology. The writing experience is great, but there are no advanced features like Onyx, Remarkable or Supernote. This may be a good thing, because all these brands are attractive to creative professionals, and I think Bigme is attractive to the corporate or education market. Use device passwords to ensure security, which should be attractive to these professions.
This can really replace paper in the office. Many modern documents are designed in color, such as academic PDF files, pictures, and even electronic textbooks. You won't get the same type of experience on a large black and white monitor because the colors will be lost in the conversion. I found that almost all formats are supported, such as e-books, Microsoft documents, PDF files and even Kindle.
I would really recommend this to people who don’t want something too complicated but still provide a large enough screen to view various digital content. E INK screens larger than 10 inches basically have no color options, so Bigme B1 Pro Plus is obvious.
Michael Kozlowski has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past 12 years. His articles are indexed by major and local news sources and websites, such as CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post, and The New York Times. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.