No product category escapes Xiaomi’s expansionist desire, which is launched each time with the same objective: to titillate the market leaders by relying on a striking value for money. The brand launched its first electronic e-reader last November, the Xiaomi Mi eBook Reader. If you are interested in the product, unfortunately, it is currently only available in China and India, but not for very long.
Xiaomi’s Mi Reader has just been spotted in the Bluetooth SIG database. The e-reader received its Bluetooth certification on July 22. The document reveals compatibility with the latest standard, Bluetooth 5.0. This certification is above all a sign that the device is preparing to invest in the international market, a red alert for Amazon Kindle which must already face outsiders like Kobo, Vivlio or Booken.
Xiaomi Mi eBook Reader: the technical sheet
The Xiaomi Mi eBook Reader has a technical data sheet very similar to most of the best e-readers on the market. It has a 6-inch e-Ink screen with a resolution of 221 DPI. It is a backlit LED display, adjustable to 24 gut levels. Users can read even in the dark. Under the hood, there is an ARM Allwinner B300 processor supported by 1 GB of RAM. The set provides the power needed to operate the e-reader smoothly.
It also has 16 GB of storage, enough to house tens of thousands of eBooks. Its battery has a capacity of 1,800 mAh which should give it an autonomy of several weeks. Xiaomi’s new e-reader runs under a modified version of Android 8.1 and can read most standard formats on the market: PDF, DOC, XLS, TXT and especially EPUB, a possibility that Amazon Kindle does not offer. . Users can also easily load their own eBooks onto the device.
Finally, we do not yet know at what price the Xiaomi Mi Reader will be offered in Europe. There is a good chance that it is below the 100 € mark knowing that its price is 599 yuan in China or about 73 € at the current exchange rate. For comparison, the Amazon Kindle PaperWhite, the bestseller of Amazon e-readers is offered at a price of 130 € for a technical sheet overall lower than that of the Mi Reader.