Bigme Hibreak Pro EINK Smartphone Review

The Bigme Hibreak Pro is the world’s most potent E-ink smartphone. It destroys everything else on the market, which isn’t saying much. The only other devices are the Bigme Hibreak BW and Hibreak Color, three-year-old Hisense phones, Minimalist Phone, and the Mudita Kompact. The big selling points are the 6.13-inch Carta 1200 display, which keeps things high resolution and page turns fast, the Dimensity Octa-core, 2.4GHz processor, and all the different speed modes.

Hardware

The HiBreak Pro comes with a 6.13-inch E INK Carta 1200 e-paper display with a resolution of 824 x 1648 and 300 PPI. The device’s color scheme is white, and the screen is slightly sunken and is not protected by a layer of glass. The rear has a nice leather-like finish, but does little to alleviate the overall plastic feel the build is all about. Bigme said the display offers zero blue light and zero flickering, which makes it highly safe for the eyes. The front light feature offers 36-level warm and cold dual temperature controls for comfortable reading in external lighting. A light sensor is at the top to automatically adjust the screen’s brightness. The dynamic refresh technology removes residual images automatically, so there is little to no ghosting.

Under the hood, the phone features a 6nm octa-core 2.4 GHz MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage. You cannot expand the storage since it does not have an SD card. However, the storage should be enough for thousands of apps, audiobooks, and e-books.

It has a 20 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front shooter. The phone supports 4G/5G with dual-sim, 2.4G/5G WIFI, and Bluetooth 5.2 for wireless headphones or earbuds to listen to audiobooks, music, or podcasts. NFC and a USB-C port are available. The phone has a single speaker on the bottom, which is mono and does not sound very good. A speaker grill is at the top, which is how you hear what people are saying, if you should use this as an actual phone. There is a microphone on the bottom of the screen and one at the top. A power and volume button are on the right side, a USB-C port on the bottom, a dual-sim port, and two customization keys on the left.

Keeping the device alive is a 4500 mAh battery, which should last a few weeks on a single charge. It supports 18-watt fast charging, so the battery should recharge itself quickly. I like that it has a fingerprint sensor, to keep things secure, so you don’t always need to enter a device password. A gyroscope is also handy for switching the orientation from landscape to portrait mode.

Software

The Bigme Hibreak Pro runs Google Android 14 and has full access to the Google Play Store, making it easy to download millions of apps and keep them updated. Google Play Services is also preinstalled to download all the leading Google apps such as Google Books, Maps, Chrome, etc.

The home screen is very busy and right out of the box. There are so many apps. Text, instant messaging, and folders populated with even more apps that the average user will likely uninstall most. Suffice it to say that there is a shortcut to the Google Play Store, a screen saver, a bookshelf, an app manager, settings, music, a clock, and all the usual Google preinstalled apps. On the bottom of the screen is the UI, with the camera.

If you swipe down from the top of the screen, you can access quick settings to establish a Wi-Fi network, connect Bluetooth accessories, connect to the data connection, use airplane mode, turn on the flashlight, and enable system-wide dark mode. Slider bars control the front-lit display, color temperature system, and volume slider.

The E INK Control Centre is also housed in this area and is quite important, considering this is an E INK phone, which typically suffers from refresh issues. You can set the phone to different reading settings such as books, magazines, comics, and video. A custom settings unlocks various system tweaks, such as anti-shake, auto-clean, set the refresh mode, contrast, and speed modes. Speed modes are standard fare if you ever owned a Boox or Bigme device. HD 256 displays 256 levels of grey scale, instead of the typical 16 levels. Regal, fast and extreme have their uses, but quick and extreme tend to degrade image quality to increase performance. This is good if you stream content such as video, browsing the Google Play App store, or adventuring on complex websites.

This is everything that makes the Bigme phone stand out from the typical Android phones on the market. Otherwise, it is just a phone with an E-ink screen; however, reading on it makes it better than a flagship Apple or Samsung device.

Reading

There is a stock reading app, but you don’t want to use it, considering you would have to sideload all your content. This phone has Google Play, which is heavily app reliant but perfect. Since it runs Android 14, it can access every e-reading, comic, manga, or library service app on the market. Want to use Kindle with animated page-turns or Google Play Books? This handles it all, with speed. This is primarily due to the sheer amount of RAM and the processor. The different speed modes help out in this regard too.

An E INK phone has clear advantages over an iPhone or other flagship. E INK is the closest you can get to reading on paper, so the resolution is tremendous, it is easy on the eyes and suitable for long reading sessions. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max with a super large screen, and the bright light hurts my eyes if I read websites, use apps, or read websites on Flipboard or Google News. I feel myself staying up late at night, with all the eyestrain. This is why, lately, I have been turning the screen off and listening to an audiobook before bed. If I want to read a book, I have a Kindle Colorsoft as my daily driver. The Hibreak Pro is an iPhone and an e-reader replacement, you don’t need both anymore.

The screen on this is better than the Kindle, because there is no layer of glass, so using the Hibreak will not reflect overhead lighting nor get any glare from the sun. The battery life is not as good as the Kindle because it runs Android, which always suffers from battery life issues due to so many background processes running simultaneously.

I will not list all the apps you would want to install; people with phones or Android tablets already have the preferred apps they use daily. There is an excellent Reddit thread on what other Bigme users have on their Hibreak phone or other Bigme tablets, worth reading.

Ultimately, this phone should be capable of being your daily driver for years. Most other e-readers and other devices on the market still ship with Android 11, which won’t be supported in a few years. But, since the Hibreak Pro runs Android 14, it should run any app for six years in the future.

Wrap Up

The overall unit has a chunkier design and is a bit more blocky in the hand than the previous generation. It was a bit more streamlined but less capable than our current Pro version.

The overall performance is fast, robust, and as fast as hell in extreme mode. Its 300 PPI means it can tackle anything you can throw at it visually.

Honestly, I can’t see any downsides. I guess, gun to my head, I would have liked at least one more speaker to get stereo and maybe a headphone jack. But I suppose Bluetooth is suitable for wireless earbuds or headphones. Right now, the speaker is the greatest weakness.

A personal fault I could pick out was the enormous screen Gap. The distance between the screen and the top coat layer.

It’s almost as if you could fit half a stack of post-it notes in between that gap, and the Gap itself gives you a pretty drastic drop shadow that impedes the overall cleanliness of the bill itself.

However, it’s a home run outside that. There’s not too many things wrong you can pick out of this unit. The only thing that seems the comment section is clamouring for, is a colour version.