In the vein of the Kindle Scribe, Chinese brand Bigme hopes to tempt scribblers into buying its B1051 Ultra notepad. You’ll pay at least R8,100 for one of these units. Impressively, the company will ship one from its official store to South Africa, though there’s no telling what Customs will do when you order one.
There are two versions of the package, one of which comes with a folio cover. The other (for R9,250) adds in a keyboard so there’s less need to scribble on the E-Ink display. Either way, there’s a stylus included so scribbling is encouraged.
A better name for the B1051 Ultra?
As for what you’re getting in terms of hardware, Bigme is making a big deal of the device’s battery. At 6,900mAh, it certainly should handle note-taking operations for quite some time. The 10.3in Kaleido 3 ePaper display doesn’t draw much power, but the MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processor will be more power-hungry than Amazon’s counterparts.
The rest of the specs put the B1051 Ultra into tablet territory, even if the display doesn’t completely agree. Available is a 6GB/128GB version at the prices previously mentioned. The company also makes an 8GB/256GB version, but you’ll have to route through the Chinese storefront (and extra hoops) to acquire that one. Either edition supports microSD cards up to 2TB. If you’re using it as a sketchpad, bigger might be better in terms of upgrades there.
Android 14 is present, running behind the company’s Bigme System 5.0 skin. The B1051 Ultra supposedly supports screen refreshes of up to 50fps, thanks to what Bigme calls its xRapid screen tech. It still won’t match a modern Android display, but it should make functions beyond reading and writing more bearable. Maybe don’t try gaming or Netflix, though.
Finally, there’s also an AI function — because of course there is. It’s called BigmeGPT, and it’ll translate, summarise, and answer questions. Hopefully about the PDF documents you’re editing and not the nature of the universe. That would just be weird.
The Bigme B1051 Ultra is obviously after the Kindle Scribe’s lunch money. Relatively speaking, it has a shot, too. The stylus/cover/keyboard version is priced (before SARS gets its cut) below the standard-issue Scribe with stylus and cover.
