Bigme B251 Color E Ink Monitor Review: Dreams Don’t Always Come True

IE Ink has come a long way. Now there are many cool apps for it, from e-pocketable readers like Palma Box 2 to full-featured Android tablets with colorful overlays like the Boox Note Air 4C. There’s a lot of appeal in a display that doesn’t need a bright backlight. There is less strain on the eyes, no concern for blue light and easy viewing, even in direct sunlight.

I The highest value of B251 The monitor plays on that appeal with a 25.3-inch E Ink color display. It sounds and looks promising, but at $1,499, it needs to deliver on that promise. Unfortunately, I can’t say that it does.

It’s not the display you trust

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 greatly over the years, but E Ink shows with a layer of color that lags behind. The B251 is one of these, placing a color LCD layer on top of an E Ink layer. This has a negative impact as a result.

One of the key promises of E Ink is that you can rely on ambient light to illuminate the display, so you don’t need a built-in light like a native monitor. The problem is that the color layer dims the display so much that it needs to be lit unless you have your back to a wall of sunny windows.

For me, even in a well-lit room near a sunny window, the Bigme B251 was too dim without its backlight. That light is gentle on the eyes and has an adjustable color temperature.

While the 3,200×1,800 resolution on the 25.3-inch display should be decent, clarity still ends up being an issue due to color cast and ghosting. Even text clarity for black and white content is unattainable, with text showing noticeable contrast.

Black text on a white background is great, but white text on a black background is not easy to read. Bigme claims 300ppi E Ink resolution and 150ppi color resolution, but I doubt it. This should be as sharp as a 15.3-inch display at 1200p, but I’m using it side-by-side with a Bigme, and the latter doesn’t look as sharp.

The B251 offers several different picture modes to help you adjust it when viewing different types of content. For web browsing, there is the aptly named “web” mode. There are also modes for text, images, and video. Each has some customization available for contrast and saturation, but refresh rates are locked.

The “picture” mode offers the best clarity, but has a slow refresh rate, maybe around 1Hz. Cutting around is almost impossible. Although the “video” mode is smooth, it is incredibly faint. The videos themselves appear somewhat fluid, but the entire display is unusable, especially since ghost artifacts persist indefinitely if the pixel is not refreshed with new content.

The “text” and “web” methods offer a good middle ground, but they are still not entirely satisfactory. Besides the “picture” mode, others rely heavily on segmentation, which creates a messy, grainy-looking screen for a lot of content. That’s not a good look for a gadget with such prices.

A mixed bag in another way

Beyond the screen itself, the Bigme B251 monitor is central. 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, though 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 length of the monitor while in vertical orientation.

The B251 comes with a small remote control to quickly adjust settings. Even though it’s a basic remote, it’s very useful as the built-in monitor controls feel cheap and have hard-to-read labels.

The monitor’s hardware looks good enough, with a simple white-and-silver color scheme that harkens back to some older Mac-in-one systems. At over an inch thick, the white bezels are undeniably large for the 2026, but they’re nicely curved and consistent. Unfortunately, those bezels and the entire back of the monitor feel like they’re made from very cheap plastic for a $1,500 monitor.

The stand has real metal, the only parts there are, but this is offset by the neck section with a plastic plate painted silver to give it a metal look. On the bright side, the stand offers plenty of positioning flexibility with tilt, pivot, height and rotation adjustments.

The B251 includes speakers, but they don’t sound great. There is an obnoxious resonance in this case, even at medium volumes, which is hard to accept for a monitor at this price.

Just one nail in the coffin: the B251 uses an external power brick. The monitor isn’t small overall, and it’s not small by any means, and it only requires 60 watts. Relying on an external power brick that includes a desk feels completely unnecessary.

Final thoughts

The dream of a good-looking E Ink monitor that can be easily illuminated by room light, displaying sharp, easy-to-see content, is not dead, but The highest value of B251 it does not accomplish it. While this monitor gives you a lot more screen real estate than you’d find on an E Ink tablet, it’s a very compromising experience for a premium priced device.

I found it gentle to look at, but that was suppressed by the strain on my eyes to make out the rough text. I had to figure out where my mouse cursor was, due to the low refresh rate, and try to find anything that happened in the areas where any color was involved.

If you’re looking for easy-looking E Ink, I’ve spent days writing and browsing the web in black-and-white. Boox Note Air and color Boox Tab Ultra C. Although much smaller than the B251, the experience was overall better. Plus, their portability means you can just take them out of the sun and avoid the backlight altogether.