Bigme B251
Benefits
- Easy to see in very bright environments
- Many input source options
Disadvantages
- The advantages of E ink diminished by the color LCD layer
- Low color pixel density
- Unsatisfactory speakers
- Disappointing design
E Ink has come a long way. There are now many interesting applications, from pocket e-readers like the Boox Palma2 to full-fledged Android tablets with color layers like the Boox Note Air 4C. There’s a lot of appeal in a display that doesn’t require a bright backlight. There’s less eye strain, no blue light issues, and easy viewing even in bright sunlight.
THE Bigme B251 The monitor plays into this appeal with a 25.3-inch E Ink color screen. It looks promising, but at $1,499 it needs to deliver on that promise. Unfortunately, I can’t say.
It’s not the display you’re hoping for
Testing the Bigme B251 may be my first time using an E Ink monitor, but it’s far from my first time testing an E Ink device. I’ve seen black and white contrast improve significantly over the years, but E Ink displays with a color layer lag behind. The B251 is one of them, placing a color LCD layer on top of an E Ink layer. This therefore has a negative impact on brightness.
One of the main promises of E Ink is that you can rely on ambient light to illuminate the screen, so you don’t need a built-in backlight like a traditional monitor. The problem is that the color layer darkens the display so much that you need lighting unless your back is against a wall of sunlit windows.
For me, even in a comfortably lit room near a sunny window, the Bigme B251 was too dark without its lighting. This lighting is gentle on the eyes and has an adjustable color temperature.
Although a resolution of 3200 x 1800 on a 25.3-inch screen should be fine, clarity is still an issue due to color casting and ghosting. Even the text clarity of black and white content isn’t up to par, with text exhibiting noticeable pixelation.
Black text on a white background is the best case scenario, but white text on a black background is barely readable. Bigme claims 300 ppi E Ink resolution and 150 ppi color resolution, but I’m skeptical. This should be as sharp as a 15.3-inch display at 1200p, but I’m using one side-by-side with the Bigme, and the latter doesn’t look as sharp.
The B251 offers several different picture modes to help steer it in the right direction when viewing different types of content. For browsing the Web, there is the “web” mode which lives up to its name. There are also modes for text, images and video. Each has some customization available for contrast and saturation, but they have locked refresh rates.
“Picture” mode provides the best clarity, but it has a very slow refresh rate, maybe around 1Hz. Mouse-over is virtually impossible. Although the “video” mode is smoother, it is incredibly spotty. The videos themselves look somewhat smooth, but the rest of the display becomes largely unusable, especially since ghosting artifacts permanently persist if a pixel isn’t refreshed with new content.
The “text” and “web” modes offer a good compromise, but are still not completely satisfactory. Aside from “picture” mode, the others rely heavily on dithering, resulting in a messy, grainy screen for a lot of content. It’s not very good looking for such an expensive gadget.
A mixed bag
At least the Bigme B251 has plenty of connection options.
Mark Knapp/CNETBeyond the screen itself, the Bigme B251 monitor is average. It has a reasonable variety of ports: HDMI, Mini HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C, as well as some USB hub capabilities. Wireless streaming to the monitor is also possible, although I didn’t find it as compelling as Bigme’s promotional content suggested. For example, I couldn’t get my phone to fill the entire height of the monitor when in vertical orientation.
The B251 comes with a small remote control for quickly adjusting settings. Even though it’s a basic remote, it’s very useful because the monitor’s built-in controls feel cheap and have hard-to-read labels.
The monitor’s hardware is quite nice, with a simple white and silver color scheme reminiscent of some older all-in-one Mac systems. At over an inch thick, the white bezels are undeniably large for 2026, but they’re pleasantly curvy and uniform. Unfortunately, these bezels and the entire rear casing of the monitor feel like they’re made from way too cheap plastic for a $1,500 monitor.
The bezel is thin by 2026 standards.
Mark Knapp/CNETThe stand has metal in it, one of the only parts, but this is offset by the neck part having a plastic plate painted silver to look like metal. On the bright side, the stand offers great positional flexibility with tilt, swivel, height, and rotation adjustments.
The B251 includes speakers, but they don’t sound very good. There is an unpleasant resonance in the case, even at medium volume, which is difficult to accept for a monitor at this price.
Just one more nail in the coffin: the B251 uses an external power supply. The monitor isn’t small overall, nor thin at all, and it only needs 60 watts. Relying on an external power brick cluttering up the desk seems completely unnecessary.
Final Thoughts
The dream of a stunning E Ink monitor that can be illuminated simply by room lighting, displaying crisp, eye-pleasing content, is not dead, but the Bigme B251 does not succeed. While this monitor gives you a lot more screen real estate than you could get with E Ink tablets, it’s far too compromised an experience for a device with a considerable price tag.
I found it gentle to look at, but this was offset by the added strain on my eyes to scan the rough text. I had to figure out where my mouse cursor was, thanks to the low refresh rate, and try to figure out what was happening in areas where any color was involved.
If you want E ink that’s easy on the eyes, I spent days writing and browsing the web on a black and white screen. Boox Note Air and the color Boox Tab Ultra C. Although much smaller than the B251, the experience was altogether better. Plus, their portability means you can simply expose them to the sun and avoid backlighting altogether.
