Bigme is a company that has a strong track record of making digital paper-type products, with a strong emphasis on AI and note-taking. The one thing missing from their portfolio is a dedicated ebook reader. The company has just unveiled the Bigme Read, a 6-inch e-reader designed to compete against the Kobo Nia, Nook Glowlight 4e and even the entry-level Kindle. The Read has several advantages that other readers don’t: full access to the Google Play Store, speakers, a mic and expandable storage. You can order it today from the Good e-Reader Store for $149.99.
The Bigme Read features a 6-inch E INK Carta HD e-paper display panel with a resolution of 1024×758 and 212 PPI. It has 36 warm and cool LED lights to provide a front-lit display to read in the dark. The colour scheme is black, and it has a physical home button on the bottom of the show.
Underneath the hood is a quad-core 1.8GHZ processor, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. An SD card is capable of up to 1TB of additional storage. There is WIFI for connecting to the internet, Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless headphones and dual speakers to listen to audiobooks, podcasts or music. A microphone can use voice communication apps like Teamspeak, Zoom, Chime or Discord. You can transfer your audiobooks or ebooks to the reader via USB-C, and it supports TXT, EPUB, PDF, FB2, ZIP, PRC, MOBI, RTF, OEB, Mp3 and more. The device is powered by a 1,300 mAh battery, and the dimensions are 122x90x5mm and weighs 170g.
The Read has the Google Android 11 operating system and full access to Google Play Services and the Google Play Store. You can immediately log in and start downloading your favourite apps. Bigme is one the only brands with Google Play on their entire lineup. Despite the proportional pictures being in Chinese, it has full English support and many other European languages.
I am happy that Bigme has finally decided to release an e-reader with its famous software and no note-taking functionality. It is designed just to read books and download apps from Google.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
