Bigme B7 Review

I’ve been using/testing the 7″ Bigme B7 for almost three weeks now.

This review centres around the core uses of reading ebooks/documents, and making handwritten notes, however, I will touch upon some of the more unique features of this device, such as the rear camera and sim card slot.

Design and Build

The Bigme B7 is a small 7″ e-ink tablet, which means that it is light and portable. Although the surface of the rear of the tablet is quite smooth, it is not as slippery as it looks, and it is comfortable to hold for long periods whilst reading.

It has a dark-silver metal chassis, and a glass screen. Upon close inspection, it appears to be well-machined with no visible imperfections. There is no audible creaking or rattling, and it appears to be robust and durable.

The edges are flat and the corners are rounded. On the left edge is the USB port (for charging/data transfer) and the speaker. On the top edge is the power button (slightly raised) and a microphone. The right edge is bare, but the stylus can be magnetically snapped here. And the bottom edge has a microphone and a tray to hold a sim card and MicroSD card.

On the left side of front panel are two physical page-turn buttons. Like its predecessor, the B751C, the buttons have a very satisfying tactile and audible ‘click’ when pressed. They are solid (not loose), and feel exactly the same no matter where they are pressed – some other tablets have buttons that have a variable tactile feel if you press them at the top or bottom edges. There is also a gap between them, which makes it easy to identify which-is-which when reading in the dark.

In the top-right corner of the underside is a 5Mp camera, and it is almost flush with the rear panel (slightly sunk but in the realm of micrometers and only noticeable by running a finger over it and feeling the lip). It is really well integrated into the chassis, and allows the unit to lie flat (unlike some other e-ink tablets like the Boox Tab Ultra C Pro, which have the camera lens protruding out a millimetre or two).

I did encounter a small issue related to the page-turn buttons and camera. By default, the page-turn buttons are on the left edge, but (being right-handed) I much prefer them to be on the right. So I flipped the screen orientation to put the buttons on the right, but of course, this also flipped the rear camera from the top-left of the rear panel to the bottom-right. As well as making photographs get taken upside-down, my fingers were also obscuring the lens as I was naturally holding the tablet in the bottom-right corner. Not a massive issue, but it did mean I had to keep remembering to rotate the tablet when switching between reading and camera-based tasks.

Overall, I feel the design and build of the Bigme B7 is exceedingly good. It is small, lightweight, and comfortable to hold, and appears to be robust and durable.

Hardware specs

Under the bonnet, the Bigme B7 is powered by a MediaTek Helio P35 processor, with 8 cores and a clock speed of 2.3GHz.

It has 8Gb of RAM, and 128Gb of storage capacity.

In addition, there is an internal GPU and it uses Bigme’s xRapid technology, which allows for faster refresh rates in third-party apps (often at the cost of battery life).

On paper, this looks very strong, but in my benchmarking tests, it scored 881 in the multi-core test, and 192 in the single-core test (the mean average of three tests). It also took a very long time to complete. Compared with other Android e-ink tablets I’ve tested, this is a pretty low score (check out my benchmarks table for several e-ink tablets here).

Of course, it runs absolutely fine for the core functions of reading and writing, and low-intensity tasks such as basic web browsing perform well. But if you want to use more resource-hungry third-party apps (or multi-task between several apps), you may hit a performance bottleneck.

Screen

The screen is 7″ in size, which is fair bit smaller than more conventional ~10″ screens and has both advantages and disadvantages.

On the plus side, it is small, compact, and lightweight, which makes it very portable and comfortable to hold. On the negative side, it can be uncomfortable to view some PDFs (although there are software options to improve comfort, such as viewing half-a-page per screen in landscape mode), and you have a smaller canvas for writing on. In my eyes, this form factor works really well for reading ebooks, particularly as it has physical page-turn buttons, but is not so convenient for writing tasks.

The Bigme B7 has a Kaleido 3 (colour) screen, which is particularly useful when web browsing, reading color ebooks/comic books, or color-coding your notes. However, please note that all color e-ink screens are not as bright or vibrant as conventional LCD/OLED screens – colors have a pixel density of 150 DPI, and black-and-white is 300DPI. And when compared with monochrome e-ink tablets, the overall screen contrast (without a frontlight) is a few shades darker – this means that you usually need to turn on the frontlight more frequently with color e-ink than with a monochrome equivalent (which drains more battery – see my battery tests below).

Having recently reviewed the Boox Go Color 7, which is also a 7″ color Kaleido 3 writing tablet, the white background appears to be a little brighter on the Bigme B7 with the frontlight turned off, however, color text and images look a little paler.

There’s a frontlight, with both warm and cold settings, and it illuminates the screen really well. The extra layer of the frontlight often creates a small gap between where the stylus nib touches the screen and where the strokes appear, almost as if you are writing underneath the screen. But on the B7, this was very tiny and almost indiscernible, which was a good thing.

Overall the screen is very good.

Writing feel

I noted in my recent review of the Boox Go Color 7 that I inadvertently used the Bigme stylus with it, and doing so improved the tactile writing feel. This is because the nib of the Bigme stylus is thinner, rougher, and softer than that of the Boox InkSense stylus, which means that it feels more precise, has a bit more friction, and doesn’t produce a harsh tapping sound every time the nib hits the screen.

The same was true when using the Bigme stylus with the B7 itself – I found the writing feel to be much more pleasant than the Boox Go Color 7.

In fact, I would go as far to say that the writing feel on the Bigme B7 is perhaps the best I’ve used on a non-Wacom e-ink tablet. However, when compared to those tablets that do use Wacom EMR, it doesn’t quite shape up. The pen glides across the screen a bit too slickly, producing more of a marker-on-whiteboard feel than pen-on-paper. Occasionally, I would experience missed strokes, leaving gaps in my handwriting, and when writing quickly, I experienced a small amount of latency, with the strokes lagging behind the pen nib a little.

Despite the occasional lag, writing did feel quite precise, and I was surprised to see that there did not seem to be too much of a gap between the surface of the screen and where the strokes appear. Often, on e-ink tablets that have a frontlight, there is a discernible space between the surface and the ink, almost as if you are writing beneath the screen. This gap is not so apparent on the B7.

However, I should note that after using Bigme’s pre-installed stylus calibration tool, the writing precision became much less precise, and the more I calibrated, the worse it became. In the end, I had to ‘Factory Reset’ the stylus calibration (not the whole device) to get back to a usable writing experience, which sort of makes the in-built stylus calibration tool useless!

Overall, the writing feel is okay, but personally I prefer the tactile feel of Wacom styluses. However, as far as non-Wacom styluses go, this is one of the best. It is perfectly usable for quick note-taking tasks, but I wouldn’t want to be using this as my primary writing tablet.

Hardware features

As standard for most e-ink tablets, there’s support for both Wifi and Bluetooth connectivity. As well as connecting headphones, Bluetooth can also be used to connect other peripherals, such as third-party keyboards, or a mouse.

For further connectivity, the single USB-C port, however, when I connected it up to my laptop, I was unable to browse the files/folders on the B7. My laptop recognised the tablet as a mass storage device but no files or folders were displayed.

As previously mentioned, the physical page-turn buttons are really good and have a fantastic audible and tactile feel to them.

There’s a G-Sensor for automatically reorienting the screen between landscape/portrait when you rotate it physically. This means that you can have the physical page-turn buttons on the left or right side depending on your preference (or even at the bottom when viewing ebooks in landscape).

And there’s also speakers and microphone. The microphone can be used for recording voice notes or for recording a meeting – Bigme also provide software for transcribing and translating voice. As well as system sounds (such as notification alerts), the speakers can be used for listening to music/videos. However, don’t expect too much from the onboard speakers and mic – they’re very basic additions that are great for simple everyday use, but are not going to produce anything of production quality. In addition, there is also an internal vibration motor that provides haptic feedback during certain operations.

For additional storage, there’s a MicroSD card slot/tray. Also accessible via the tray is a compartment for a Sim card (NanoSim form factor). This means that the B7 offers something that (as far as I’m aware) no other e-ink table offers – the ability to connect over 4G mobile networks. Not only is this useful for data transfers when no local wifi networks are available, but it also means that the B7 can be used as an Android phone. Obviously, it wouldn’t be as convenient as a smartphone for calls – you’re not going to hold it up to your ear in a comfortable fashion – but laying it flat on a table and using speakerphone is an option. You can also use it for tasks such as SMS messaging, as well as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger etc.

Finally, the B7 includes a rear-facing camera – another rare feature for any e-ink tablet, and the only one of its kind that I know of in the 7″ form factor. It is 5Mp and has a flash (which, incidentally, can also double up as a flashlight). The camera can be used for taking low-quality photos, but the most powerful use for it is document scanning. If you have a paper document, you can use Bigme’s Document Scanner tool to take a picture of it and convert it into text. A wi-fi connection is needed for the conversion, but I was quite surprised at how well it worked – it didn’t get my test document 100% correct, but it was pretty close! Considering my document had a lot of mathematical notation in it, the B7 did a decent job of converting it (see images below) The scanned document can then be exported as either PDF or TXT.

Overall, the Bigme B7 has a plethora of hardware features, some of which you wouldn’t usually expect on an e-ink tablet. This means that it is versatile and can potentially be used for a wider variety of tasks than is usually expected from this type of device.

Battery

The B7 has a 3000mAh battery, which is a decent-sized battery for a small e-ink tablet, however, it didn’t perform too well on my battery tests.

The table below shows how much battery is depleted by performing certain operations for an hour.

Test (1hr)	Bigme B7 (% battery used)
Note-taking	8%
Reading	6%
Wifi On	+2%
Frontlight On (medium)	+1%
Frontlight On (full)	+9%

Bigme B7 Battery Test

So, you could expect to drain about 8% of the battery per hour when note-taking, and 6% per hour when reading. Having Wifi turned on uses around 2% extra per hour. With the frontlight turned on to a medium setting, add an additional 1% per hour, and on full, add an additional 9% per hour.

I calculate typical battery life from these figures by assuming 3 hours of note-taking and 3 hours of reading each day, with the Wifi turned on. If the frontlight is turned off then you could expect to use about 54% of the battery per day, giving you around 1.9 days of usage per full charge. If you have the frontlight on a medium setting for this 6-hour duration, you would use around 60% of the battery and it would last around 1.7 days before needing a recharge.

The B7 has the poorest performing battery out of all the e-ink tablets I’ve tested. Part of the reason for this quick battery drain could be the internal GPU which, along with Bigme’s xRapid technology, provides faster refresh rates in third-party apps – tablets that have fast-refresh tech usually drain the battery faster than those that don’t. Using the native note-taking and e-reading apps uses quite a lot of battery-per-hour, but some of this appears to be used by the underlying operating system. Even with the frontlight/Wifi/Bluetooth etc. turned off and all apps closed (simply displaying the home-screen), the B7 still drains 2-3% of battery per hour.

So, overall, battery life on the B7 isn’t very good.

Accessories

Along with the B7 itself, Bigme also shipped a folio and stylus.

Folio

For those that have read my review of the Bigme B751C, you will have noted that I wasn’t very impressed with the folio design.

I’m happy to report that the folio for the Bigme B7 is a great deal better.

The spine is joined to the front and rear panels along the whole of the edge, which means that the two panels no longer move independently of one another. It is also thin and lightweight.

It is made from a polymer material, with a leathery texture on the exterior and a softer suede-like texture on the interior. The front panel is divided into three slightly thicker rectangular sections both to protect the screen and to fold up to convert the folio into a stand (landscape mode). In the stand, the tablet doesn’t feel all that stable, but it is usable.

There’s a magnetic flap on the right side that acts as a clasp to keep the folio closed and hold the stylus in place. Personally I don’t like these flaps because they just sort of flop around when the folio is open. You can magnetically snap it to the rear panel, but then the folio doesn’t lie flat on the desk, so it just becomes a little bothersome trying to manage the flap in day-to-day use. However, this is true for a lot of e-ink tablets – the only one I can say that has resolved this issue adequately is the reMarkable Paper Pro, which has an magnetic indent on the rear of the folio that the flap fits perfectly into when the folio is open.

On the interior of the B7 folio, adjacent to the spine and centralised, is a small indent for the physical page-turn buttons. As I mentioned earlier, I prefer the buttons to be on the right, but this is not possible when the tablet is in the folio because they will only magnetically connect with the buttons on the left. Again, not a massive issue for me because I tend to only use the folio for protection during transportation, detaching the tablet when I want to use it (which is easy to do because it is only held with magnets). I find most small 7″ e-ink tablets to be more comfortable to hold without the folio, not only because they are lighter, but also because the edges of the tablet are softer and more rounded than the edges of the folio, and there are less moving parts (such as the flap, or front panel).

Another issue with the folio/table combination (and something that I’ve seen on a few other tablets) is that the USB-C port is on the left edge of the tablet. This means you can’t charge the tablet when the folio is closed.

There’s a small ellipse-shaped cut-out on the rear panel for the camera, however, if the front panel is open and folded behind the rear panel, this blocks the camera lens, so (again) I found it more convenient to remove the tablet from the folio when using the camera, rather than having the front panel swinging around when trying to take a photo.

Overall the folio is good. There’s a few irksome design issues with it, but these are related to using the tablet whilst it is inside the folio. They become non-issues if you detach the tablet from the folio prior to using it.

Stylus

The Bigme stylus is mostly cylindrical with one flattened edge so that it snaps flush to the right edge of the tablet via magnetism. Incidentally, the stylus (being non-Wacom and having an internal battery) charges wirelessly when attached to the tablet.

The top of the stylus is dome-shaped and has a small push button on the top that acts as a selection eraser (you do have to make sure it is pressed in for it to work). I couldn’t find any way to customize this button – the Stylus section in settings only provides the calibration tool I discussed about.

As I noted in the Writing Feel section above, the nib is quite thin and precise for a capacitive stylus. The material it is made from also has quite a soft and ‘rubbery‘ texture, which means the sound of the tip hitting the screen is quite muted and there is some resistance when making pen strokes. And it actually feels quite pleasant to write with (although not as good as pretty much all Wacom equivalents I’ve used).

It is quite light, but fairly well balanced. However, it does rattle when shaken, which I, personally, find to bit a bit irksome.

Overall, the stylus is okay. As capacitive pens go, it probably has the nicest writing feel, but that is in the context of being the best of (in my opinion) a second-tier technology. I find pretty much all Wacom (first-tier) styluses to be much nicer to use.

Software

My review of this tablet should be read in conjunction with my review of the current firmware (see table below), which includes aspects such as the Operating System, User Interface, and Native Apps.

The hardware and software reviews have been separated because the firmware used at the time that this review was written may not be the same firmware being used currently. This could result in the review quickly becoming outdated. Also, as several tablets may use the same firmware, this would mean going back and updating every single tablet review from a particular manufacturer to account for the new firmware. By splitting them up, if there is a firmware update, I am able to make the updates on a single page.

Current versions of this brand’s firmware are shown in the table below, along with the tablets running them.

My rating	Firmware version	Tablets using this firmware
	4.6 (current version) Aug 2025	Bigme B1051C Bigme B7 Bigme B751C
Older Bigme firmware versions may be found here

Brand

For some people, it is also worth considering the brand as whole, including aspects like customer service, ecosystem, values, and criticisms.

My full overview of the Bigme brand can be found here, but I have provided a summary below.

Final verdict

Around 18 months, there weren’t any 7″ e-ink writing tablets on the market, but now there are quite a few to choose from. Brands include Bigme, Boox, and Kobo.

Unfortunately, none of them use Wacom-EMR for stylus input, and Wacom (in my opinion) is the gold standard. But, although not fantastic, the B7 does have the best tactile writing feel out of these non-Wacom devices.

Personally, I find this form factor to be too small for mainly writing tasks, but they work really well when used primarily as e-readers with the option to occasionally take handwritten notes.

As with all Bigme devices, I found the software to quite buggy and clunky. There are two native e-reading apps installed (xReader and xReader Pro) and both had bugs and crashed multiple times when using them. A couple of ePubs I opened didn’t work correctly – on xReader, some of the text (mathematical notation) was not rendered at all, and although it rendered correctly in xReader Pro, the Table of Contents was missing. There’s also an issue with native note-taking app and the task switcher – essentially, you can’t switch between the note-taking app and a different app because when you open another app, the note-taking app simply closes instead of remaining open in memory. These are just a few of the many bugs I encountered with the software, which meant that using the device was an inevitably frustrating experience – other examples include the stylus calibration tool I mentioned above, and the inability to configure the wifi during the first boot because the on-screen keyboard is not enabled (as mentioned in my unboxing).

Bigme have a lot of work to do to make their firmware more stable and user-friendly, which is a shame because the hardware isn’t too bad.

The B7 has Android, and Bigme’s xRapid Fast Refresh technology, which means that third-party apps can be installed and will often perform better than on tablets that don’t have fast-refresh tech. However, the CPU benchmarks do not score as highly as other similar devices, which may lead to performance bottlenecks. Similarly, the battery life is very poor – I was particularly surprised how much battery is used for solely e-reading, so-much-so that I ran my tests twice, but got the same results. This could possibly be another example of the inefficient coding in the native firmware.

The Bigme B7 does stand out in a couple areas. It is the only 7″ e-ink tablet with a rear camera, and the only e-ink tablet I know of that accepts a sim card. This makes it very similar in functionality to an e-ink Android mobile phone – in fact, GeekBench identified it as a HiBreak (which is the name of Bigme’s smartphone product), so it appears to me that the B7 is a repackaged HiBreak phone in a 7″ chassis. It also has an internal motor, which provides haptic feedback (a vibration) when you get a notification (such as a new message).

The question is, do you really need these kinds of feature from an e-ink tablet, or should an e-ink tablet be restricted to mainly reading and writing tasks and you continue to use your smartphone for communication and photography/scanning tasks?

This is something that is going to fall into the realms of subjectivity and personal choice. Personally, I wouldn’t use the 4G connectivity or camera on an e-ink device because I feel it is slower and more cumbersome than using my smartphone, but I know that there are plenty of people that would be excited about the prospect of being able to shift more of their workflows onto an e-ink screen. And I think that the Bigme B7 would appeal to this niche set of users because it offers something that no other e-ink tablet currently provides.

But unless you are going to be making full use of these additional hardware features, you should probably consider other e-ink tablets that provide a better core reading/writing experience due to having more stable and user-friendly firmware, and longer battery life.

In summary, the Bigme B7 is well-designed and built, and offers unique hardware that isn’t available elsewhere (camera, Sim card slot, GPU/xRapid, haptic feedback). But the battery life is poorer, the CPU benchmarks aren’t great, and the software is not as robust as other e-ink tablets.

Buying options

The Bigme B7 can be purchased from:

• The Bigme Store
• Some Amazon Stores
  

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