Xiaomi released the Xiaomi 7 e-reader a month ago. It features a design similar to the Amazon Kindle Oasis, with page-turn buttons. The e-reader features an E Ink Carta 1200 e-paper display with a resolution of 300 PPI, ensuring that ebooks and text look good. Thanks to the front-lit display and colour temperature system with 32-level warm and cold lights, you can read during the day or night.
An innovative aspect of the e-reader is its intelligent refresh mode, which can identify whether it is images or displayed texts. It then adjusts the refresh mode automatically to ensure a smoother and seamless reading experience. This is designed to offer faster page turns and be cleaner, with negligible chances of ghosting effects.
Coming to its design, the Xiaomi e-reader sports familiar looks in the form of an asymmetrical build. It looks like an Amazon Oasis clone, which isn’t bad. The thicker portion also hosts the physical page turn buttons, which ensures a seamless and more immersive reading experience. The e-reader, otherwise, is extremely light. It has a USB-C port at the bottom left while sporting integrated speakers. You can connect to the internet with WIFI; it also has Bluetooth 5.0.
Under the hood lies a quad-core RK3566 processor with 2 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. The Xiaomi e-reader comes with a 1200 mAh battery built into the device, though interestingly, the e-reader is also accompanied by a charging case, which too comes integrated with a larger 1950mAh battery.
The Xiaomi 7 runs Google Android 11 but does not have the Google Play Store. However, you can sideload in your apps or an alternative app store such as the Amazon or Samsung Galaxy App Store. You can use the browse to download Google Chrome, and it has a native package installer, which you can use to download apps manually from sites like APKPURE or APKMIRROR. The one drawback is that this does not support English out of the box, nor is English available as a firmware update. In our full review, we will be testing if a 3rd party launcher such as Nova Launcher will provide us with an English UI.
When it comes right down to it, this is a fantastic little e-reader. You can purchase the Xiaomi 7 from the Good e-Reader Store for $399.99.
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.
