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.
And now they’ve stopped making it - just when I first learn about it.
Get the X3 or X4 Pro? Both are still available, the X4 Pro is only slightly more expensive.
X4 pro sold out
Its available again.
I barely made it under the radar. I ordered it 10 days ago. I didn’t know it would be discontinued. The day after I bought it, it said out of stock. I wasn’t even sure I was gonna get it since the tracking never got updated. Tracking just kept saying 'Waiting to be shipped." Then here it was in my mailbox. Whew!
I can remember the days when I would be able to read text that small.
I was nervous about it. I had to wait 10 days for this thing to get to me and the whole time, I was thinking to myself, “What if I can’t read it?” lol
But no problems, the screen is crisp and the text dark enough that I’ve been reading on it non-stop since I got it!
Can you not change the text size?
Yes, you can. I was worried that I’d have to go comically big with the text though, and would have to be turning the page constantly because so few words on screen. Original OS it comes with only has 2 sizes: Big and Small.
But now with CrossPoint OS on it, it has a bunch of different text sizes, so works out for me fine. I read the text at the size you see it is in the picture.
There are several sizes in both default software and CrossPoint.
I also nabbed one of these shortly before they announced the new one. Very happy with it, and I now strongly suggest it to friends. Especially with the Biscuit firmware loaded up I recommend it to people in activist circles I run in for some of the comms and network tools. I’ve got a pretty extensive ebook collection that I loaded up into the SD card and I have probably years worth of books in a device that size. It feels like cheating almost.
That’s awesome. I’m not familiar with Biscuit firmware. What’s that used for?
Still has the same basic reading functionality, and some basic games like chess and minesweeper, but then it also has some very useful tools. I think the one I personally have the most use for is the dead drop web server. It enables a local web server and creates a WiFi network multiple users can join to share files ad hoc. There’s a similar tool for messaging, but without a touch screen the typing experience is quite bad. I wonder if a little usb keyboard could connect for that. Here’s a link to the firmware, the online flashing tool, and a picture of the feature list.
https://github.com/yattsu/biscuit
Web Flashing tool (scroll waaaay down for it)
EDIT: when is says crypto is means simple cryptography, not currency
mine has developed a faint cloudy smudge in the top left that seems to fade away sometimes and then return. i may have sat on it. unless it gets any worse it doesn’t affect my enjoyment, i’ve had it for a couple of months and getting plenty of reading done. it takes a very short time to get used to the small size and being able to fit unnoticeably into a pocket makes it ideal for fag breaks and lunchtimes. don’t put it in your back pocket like i did
the video on the official site shows off its quite useless magnetic back, suggesting this is so you can stick it to the back of your phone? it shows a model cheerfully scrolling the internet, flipping the phone round to read, flipping back etc. i can hardly imagine a more frivolous use case, but crosspoint allows you to set custom lockscreens so you could use it for a fridge magnet if you really wanted. it only likes bitmaps, there are various online converters available, i used https://crosspoint-pxc-converter.pages.dev/
mine came with some sticky metal rings so i can attach the device to any surface i so choose. i have not so far elected to do so
an actually useful thing in crosspoint is the button remapping, if you notice in the OP photo his thumb is right by the power button, not the page turn button - you can set a short press of the power button to be next page
I never thought of the fridge magenet thing! That’s hilarious. Thanks for the insights!
I hate reading on my phone, and I always thought because it’s small, and it’s a bit that with the size of letters not the screen because that looks amazing. Like I want to read that. Background nice. Letters nice. Just nice!
I felt exactly the same way. After I bought it, but before I actually got it, I was having a little buyer’s remorse. But after reading on it, I love it.
The thing with phones, is they’re heaver, distractions, and most of all, they use backlight screen which flickers at a high rate you can’t see but that still causes eye fatigue for long viewing. On a phone, I can barely finish proofreading some of my longer texts before being annoyed! lol
This ebook reader, and others like it, are “e-ink,” so just static. Like paper because it has no flicker rate. So no eye fatigue. I’ve finished one book on it already, and have started another. Very easy to read. Plus it does just one thing. So no distractions, no looking online, no browswer, nothing. It doesn’t do anything but let ya read.
It looks nice, but it’s so very small. I think I’d go crazy having to move to another page and completely reset my eyes every two sentences.
My current ebook reader is a 60" TV hooked up to my PC.
a television is not an ebook reader. how do you not ‘reset your eyes’ when you are reading in imax?
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.
[…] you need to be looking completely away
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
I was making fun of the smallness too. I was always going for the bigger ereaders. But I love this thing. And it’s made for reading one handed and to carry everywhere. For me, this is perfect size. The X3 is a little bit smaller still, so I’m sticking with this one.
That looks so cool!
Its a great little device!
A coworker of mine has one thqt attaches to his iphone. Its a good setup. Very pocketable
