I’ve been using my brand-new XTEINK X4 for a bit now.
I never would have thought to buy an e-reader this small until I started this community and began reading about the XTEINK line.
And wow, I’m glad I did. Holy crap!
This is the first e-reader I’ve bought in quite a while, and I’m loving this thing. The screen is super crisp, page turns are fast, and the size is perfect for carrying around.
The original operating system it comes with is pretty rough. But after reflashing it with CrossPoint, this is probably my favorite e-reader I’ve ever owned. It is perfect for just tossing in my pocket and taking everywhere.
I’ve been reading on it while waiting for my kids to come out of school, during PTA meetings, and even at a school volleyball game last night. Whenever there was a delay or nothing was happening, I just pulled it out and read for a few minutes.
I love this thing.
The company is XTEINK, based in Shenzhen, China. Its founder is Crusoe Hu. Hu described XTEINK as a “small team based in Shenzhen” working on compact E Ink devices.
He said the goal was simple: make a reader small enough that people would actually carry it everywhere instead of leaving it at home like a larger Kindle.
That is exactly why I like it so much. I don’t need a front light, touchscreen, or a bunch of extra features. I just want a tiny reader I can keep with me and actually use.
For this regular XTEINK X4, the specs are:
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Display: 4.3-inch black-and-white E Ink
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Resolution: about 220 ppi
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Touchscreen: No
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Front light: No
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Controls: Physical buttons only, including page-turn and navigation controls
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Processor: Espressif ESP32
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Storage: Ships with a 16 GB microSD card Maximum microSD capacity: Up to 256 GB
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Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz
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Bluetooth: Yes
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USB: USB-C, mainly for charging and serial communication rather than normal USB mass storage
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Battery: 650 mAh
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Claimed battery life: Up to about 14 days, based on 1 to 3 hours of reading per day
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Dimensions: 114 × 69 × 5.9 mm, or about 4.49 × 2.72 × 0.23 inches
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Weight: Around 74 to 77 grams, or roughly 2.6 to 2.7 ounces
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Magnetic back: Yes
The key thing about the original X4 is how stripped down it is. It is basically a 4.3-inch E Ink screen, an ESP32 microcontroller, physical buttons, a microSD card, and a battery inside a very thin case.
CrossPoint takes that simple hardware and turns it into a much better reading device. Love it.
Resetting your eyes is the jump from the bottom back to the top. You need to do it regardless of what you’re reading on if you flip from page to page, but being able to see more than one page vertically means doing it less often than you need to with a book instead of more.
this is conceptually baffling to me - the smaller the screen the less jumping must occur?
Sure, but with much more frequency. If you try to follow the 20/20/20 rule then every so often you need to be looking completely away anyway. If you’re looking at a screen from which you can comfortably read several pages in a row with the natural flowing progression of your eyes you need to make the reset to continue far less than when you’re reading from something that only holds a few sentences at a time, and they will align far more often with the times you should take short breaks from looking at the screen.
ah this is the thing, eink screens emulate paper, they do not flicker so there is no need to rest your eyes
with normal size ereaders, your eyes jump even less than the equivalent of a paper book, since every two pages they don’t need to do the diagonal up. with this little dinky one they barely jump at all since they are focused on a much smaller surface although the text is the same size. you just use your thumb more for next page
It has nothing to do with screens. You should follow the 20/20/20 rule when reading actual books.
what? no, you don’t need to do that, that’s for screens
edit: i mean it can’t hurt but that rule is specifically for screens
Whatever you want.