Buy it if…

You want an affordable color Android ereader

The Bigme B6 Color is surprisingly cheap for a color ereader running on Android. It’s a good buy if you don’t want to be locked down to one specific ecosystem.

You don’t mind some jank

The software here takes some getting used to and can be buggy at times, but that shouldn’t be much of an issue if you’re used to fiddling with Android systems.

Don’t buy it if…

You need long battery life

The Bigme B6 Color’s biggest flaw is its battery life. Avoid picking one up if you need an ereader you can toss in a bag in sleep mode for a few weeks or one you don’t have to charge every day or two.

Important excerpt from the review:

It’s sometimes spoiled by the many bugs in the operating system, but the biggest issue with the Bigme B6 Color is undoubtedly its battery life. Android is much more power-hungry than most ereader operating systems, and it really shows here. With the brightness cranked up, the battery meter steadily ticks down with every page turn.

I managed to squeeze only about five hours out of a single charge flicking through manga on the Kindle app. That was closer to ten hours for a basic PDF novel stored in the system files, which would at least see you through a full week of reading, but it’s still a fraction of the multi-week usage a Kindle Colorsoft or Kobo Clara Color would give you.

To make matters worse, the battery life drops quickly when the ereader isn’t even in use. Tossed in my bag with its screen off, it lost about 10% charge each day, so you’re forced to shut it down fully every time you put it away or risk sitting down for a long train ride and finding it out of juice (something that happened to me more than once in even my relatively short testing period).