Bigme InkNote Color Lite hands-on review (2023)

Bigme InkNote Color Lite is a new digital note-taking device that is now available. This product is designed for freehand drawing, note taking, and PDF editing. All in full color at 300 PPI. This is a game changer for people who need a way to replace paper at home, work, or for students. The Lite has 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, while the regular InkNote Color+ has 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. This slight drop in RAM and storage isn't a big deal for most users who want to read colorful content or draw and not download thousands of PDFs or audiobooks. Bigme InkNote Color Lite hits the right places to become a sure-fire bestseller.

Bigme Inknote Color launched in 2022 with the E INK Kaleido two-color e-paper panel. The colors were a bit messy, and when reading ebooks the background was not gray but a mix of colors trying to make it gray. The company went back to the drawing board, instead adding the next-generation Kaleido 3 E INK color e-paper display in early 2023. It changed the world. The background is pure gray, just like the black and white reading found on popular Amazon or Kobo e-readers. In the end, you get the best of both worlds, a great reading experience and a new Kaleido 3 panel that brings colors to life. Bigme tries to compete withOnyx Boox Tab Ultra C, a new color e-paper e-note that just came out. They believe that their InkNote Color Lite will be a more cost-effective alternative since it is more affordable.

Hardware

Bigme InkNote Color Lite has a 10.3-inch E INK Carta HD capacitive touchscreen with a black and white screen with a resolution of 2480 x 1860, 300 PPI and an aspect ratio of 4:3. The color e-paper uses the latest generation of the Kaleido 3 E INK color filter matrix and has a resolution of 1240×930 and 150 PPI. The new panel can display a wider range of colors, and 4,096 color combinations make content like photos, magazines, and online tools eye-catching. Color vibrancy has been improved; colors now blend better than the previous generation Kaleido 2 E INK display.

The tablet is completely flush with the frame and protected by a layer of glass. The coloring is black. The front-lit display has 36 white and amber LEDs, allowing you to combine white with a warm candlelight effect.

InkNote Color Lite has a WACOM screen and comes with a stylus. It is used to draw on PDF, e-books, comics, newspapers, magazines, or in a drawing application. The pen is black and can be attached magnetically to the side of the device. It can also be connected via Bluetooth, so you can turn the pages of a PDF or e-book with the click of a button; You no longer need to swipe, tap, or perform touchscreen gestures to do so. It has 4096 degrees of pressure sensitivity and is controlled by voice.

Under the hood is a 2.3 GHZ octa-core A53 processor, 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. If that space isn't enough, for whatever reason, you have an SD card capable of storing an additional 128GB. Wi-Fi can connect to the Internet and download firmware updates, which should be done right away. Four noise-cancelling microphones on the bottom of the tablet are used for voice dictation, such as speech-to-text in a note-taking app. Speech recognition supports over 31 languages ​​with 98% accuracy. You can also use the microphones for apps like WhatsApp, Discord, or WeChat. You can listen to audiobooks, podcasts, music, or anything else through the dual stereo speakers. It also has Bluetooth 5.0 for headphones or optional wireless headphones. There is an 8MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera. You can use the fingerprint reader to unlock your device and set a password for added security. It has a G-sensor to automatically rotate the screen, helping you quickly switch between portrait and landscape modes. The battery is 4000 mAh, which should last several weeks. It can be charged through the USB-C port.

Software

InkNote Color Lite runs Google Android 11 and has full access to the Google Play Store. Bigme is doing big business, no kidding, with the inclusion of ChatGPT. This embedded generative AI is capable of performing tasks such as summarizing meeting minutes, writing essays, video scripts or other compositions, writing emails, translating texts in real time, reading or editing notes, writing codes, etc. NA. In fact, the list could be endless given that the generative AI is smart enough to add to its vast repertoire of abilities and continues to evolve over time. With the inclusion of GPT Chat, Bigme promises a more streamlined and structured experience for daily office activities.

The main user interface consists of a sidebar with various options at the top. The sidebar can record meetings, access notes, create to-do lists, library, office documents, local storage, cloud files, voice assistant, settings, and home button. There are almost three pages of options in the menu, but you can access the menu management feature. This will display a list of all the apps and all the default menus. You can uncheck the ones you don't want to show and check the ones you do. This allows a certain degree of customization of the entire navigation structure. If you swipe up from the top, a dropdown menu with multiple sound settings will appear. You can set the desired speed mode, control the front-lit screen brightness and color temperature system, adjust the volume, Miracast, take a screenshot and perform a full page refresh.

Several different speed modes in InkNote Color+ dramatically increase productivity. The default mode is HD, which provides the best image quality and works well with all stock apps. If you're going to be browsing the web or running lightweight apps, you'll want to enable speed mode, which is A2 mode. Normal mode is a middle ground between HD mode and speed mode. All of these are global settings; however, you can make sure that certain applications or programs open in a certain mode.

The settings menu has all the usual Android settings, but no vanilla experience; Bigme has added and removed many things. You can do the usual Wi-Fi login and password, pair Bluetooth accessories, language, data and time settings, sleep timeout, check for firmware updates, perform various smartpen calibrations and even control what you want for use the side buttons of the pen. . . By default, the cell phone has a home button, an eraser, and a forward and back button, making reading eBooks a walk in the park. For e-readers, you need to touch the screen or swipe. Bigme Pen can control page turning with a click of the stylus. I can't think of another product that does this.

The software is refined. Everything is great for me. One feature I liked was killing all background processes, which helps save battery life. Speed ​​modes improve listening to Spotify, YouTube Music, or Audible by reducing latency. You won't be able to watch video, mainly due to E INK limitations, though you can run light apps and games.

Now let's talk about languages; there is native support for 37 languages. These include German, Thai, Slovenian, Icelandic, Turkish, Ukrainian, Russian, Vietnamese, Laotian, Slovak, Dutch, Khmer, Spanish, Romanian, Norwegian, Croatian, Finnish, Greek, English, Arabic, Hindi, Danish, Malay, Catalan, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Czech, French, Korean, Polish, Hebrew, Tamil, and Italian. They are more languages ​​than any other e-note support.

write and draw

Writing in InkNote Color Lite is smooth and fluid. Drawing or annotating is not a feature exclusive to the drawing app, but you can do it in all preloaded apps. You can view and edit PDF files, highlight or write in the margins. Upload your favorite books? You can also edit them. There are a total of 16 colors that can be selected from the palette. They are; purple, light blue, lilac, black, white, dark green, yellow, orange, pink, sky blue, blue, red, green, light grey, dark gray and grey. One of the cool things about all these color options is that Bigme supports the most complete color gamut. Its competition, like Onyx, only has ten colors.

The main drawing app has many great features. You can choose writing instruments, eraser, undo/redo, insert text, insert photos/clip art, choose from 40 background templates, save or create another page. There are only a few settings that are relevant to freehand drawing. One of them is writing tools; you can choose between pen and pencil, each one has a slider to control the thickness of the line and the other is a color palette. The writing lag is very low once the pen is placed on the screen. Everything appears in less than 20 milliseconds. You can spend hours just drawing in color. You can insert text, images and vector graphics, or use the quad microphones to convert speech to text and insert it into your notes. The AI ​​system sells very well, but it could be more reliable. There were many simple grammatical errors and no use of punctuation. I found this to be more of a gimmick than an essential feature that everyone would use. There's also no lasso tool to move things around quickly.

Kaleido 3 changes the world as you draw; color mixing This is what I noticed when inserting photos or mixing colors. The old Kaleido 2 Inknote Color displayed colors as hexagons, while Kaleido 3 displayed colors as squares, mimicking the look of pixels. If you've ever opened Adobe Indesign or Photoshop and zoomed in on the image significantly, all the colors are little squares, which greatly improves color matching. That's the best way I can explain how great the Kaleido 3 is as a digital note-taking device for freehand drawing and editing multi-image PDFs.

I have not noticed any performance drop when drawing or editing PDF files with reduced RAM compared to regular InkNote Color+. I think Lite is a way to save money and get the most out of the Kaleido 3 color screen.

Reading

Inknote Color Lite comes with a pre-installed reading app and is great for getting started reading books. You'll need to upload your collection, which is fine for serious readers with extensive collections on their desktops or in the cloud. It supports multiple formats including PDF, EPUB, TXT, FB2, and AZW3. It's also great for reading manga, magazines, comics, online tools, and any other colorful content that doesn't look good on a black and white screen.

One of the other advantages of this InkNote Color Lite comes from the hardware; it is perfect for large PDF files. Page turning speed is blazing fast, even for important files that are 900MB or larger. You can quickly draw on the entire document, underline and underline, write in the margins, and control the PDF with options like scaling, rotation in landscape/portrait mode, cropping, contrast, and even anti-reflow. PDF files shine and color reproduction is excellent. It is one of the best experiences of writing PDF in any electronic note.

Not everyone will have a DRM-free eBook collection. However, the main selling point is downloading your favorite reading app from Google Play. Google Play and Google Play services are pre-installed. You can download Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and thousands of other apps that you can use on your smartphone and tablet. Page turn buttons on the stylus make turning pages easy.

I've tried Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Libby, Audible and Spotify and they all worked great, although I would install the "Lite" and "Go" apps on E INK devices as they are stripped down versions of the main app and lack the likes of animations. . Animations are the killer of E-INK, but Bigme is armed with tools to combat it. Speed ​​modes will take care of the animation work for the best user experience. I even tried a few games and they ran fine at 30 fps that Inknote Color+ supports.

Fin

There is not much to say. It is exactly the same in every possible way as InkNote Color+, except for four small dots. They removed the 4G antenna, halved the memory, and changed the RAM from 6GB to 2GB of RAM. Also, they managed to bring the price down by $200, which is significant. In terms of speed and performance, it seems to be identical to its big brother in every possible way, and it wasn't hampered by anything we tried to do. You could imagine that if you were running a lot of things at once you might run out of memory, but for each task there were no noticeable differences.