In 2010 I imported a Barnes & Noble Nook from the U.S. and had devoured tons of books (including Stephen King’s Dark entire Tower Series) on it. Until the screen broke by accident on a vacation two years later.

Since then I had fallen back to reading on Android phones (Aldiko Reader) and iBooks on the iPad mini, then the iPad Pro and then my iPhone after that.

iBooks had automatic syncing, so I could double click a book on the Mac and it would automatically show up on all the other devices. And Screen Fatigue aside, the iPhone’s high-res, self illuminated display is quite nice at night.

Ever since my Nook broke, I had missed the feeling of eInk. But a Kindle device was never an option with their closed-up ecosystem. In the meantime Kobo had released some nice e-Readers (even with color displays) and there even were other portable options.

A full size e-Reader takes up space in your jacket pocket¹. I opted to go for a small, cheap and unilluminated one by Xteink with a black & white E-Ink display.

Xteink X4

Hardware

There’s no Android and thus no support for arbitrary Apps to be installed. For me that is a plus, as it removes unnecessary complexity and saves battery.

Speaking of which, the battery holds up well for me, I have to charge it every couple of weeks. And the ubiquitous USB-C makes charging easy, when needed.

The device is computationally underwhelming, but given the battery size that is also a good thing. Once a book has been “indexed”², page turns themselves are quick and snappy. But navigating the menu and settings will still take a long second.

My device came with a FAT32 formatted 32 GB Micro SD card in the box, once I took that out and formatted it as ExFAT the entire interface was loading noticeably quicker.

I’m still a bit confused, their marketing material shows the device attached to an iPhone via MagSafe. Realistically it only fits Pro Max iPhones and according to the Subreddit only certain Models.

Therefore if you are, like me, in the non-Max club, this is going to be a standalone device for you.

Software

Stock Firmware

The default fonts are perfectly legible. But if the defaults aren’t your cup of tea, there’s tons of great resources out there to customize everything to your liking.

It only supports ePub, TXT and BMP files, no Markdown, no PDF and no Comic Book formats. Which is fine, but should be known before buying.

But even the formats it does support are often broken, For instance there’s stray HTML divs rendered throughout the text. I have yet to try cleaning up the ePub files with a Calibre Plugin to see whether it improves the experience. But coming from the Nook and iBooks I’m used to just copy the Publisher’s ePub files over as-is.

Some book covers and images are missing because modern ones come with SVG files that cannot be rendered, which is a bummer but understandable.

Webinterface

On the plus side, no Internet connection is needed, as there is a Hotspot built-in, that once you connect your phone to it, you can navigate to a barebones web interface and upload ePub files directly there.

But in reality the web interface is janky and you have to acknowledge several error messages, upload the file, close some other error message saying that the upload failed (even though it worked) and then disconnect. File management, as in creating folders, moving or deleting files is present but outright doesn’t work.

Custom Firmware

There is an active community developing tools and mods for it. Including an open source alternative firmware that can be flashed. CrossPoint Reader’s interface is more barebones, and has less settings. But the text rendering and the reading experience is way better.

Plus at the moment there is so much work being done, that a new version with new features is dropped literally every few days.

There’s no Hotspot functionality, but once connected to a network³ you can even directly browse Calibre OPDS catalogs without taking out the Storage Card.

Another thing of note: The manufacturer doesn’t seem to like the custom Firmware at all, which is why the devs have been forced to move to a Subreddit of their own.

Should you get one?

I’ve paid 65,48€ including postage and shipping and now have read several books with the Stock Firmware as well as the alternative one and am happy with it.

This is still not a purchase recommendation though, but if you think it has a place in your life, even after I described its flaws here, go ahead and buy it.

The hardware is cheap and lightweight. Do not get it for the Software. If the MagSafe issue doesn’t bother you, get the Chinese X4 from Ali Express and flash the alternative Firmware:

The upcoming X3 will supposedly fix the MagSafe issue, but does have proprietary Pogo Pins instead of USB‑C and it is currently unclear whether it will allow flashing CFW.

Don’t bother with the warranty of the international version — It isn’t worth it for such a cheap device.

You do not have to be able to read a single word of Chinese:

• Power it up
• Connect the USB Cable
• Navigate to the flashing website
• Press the flash button
• Push the reset button on the side
• Done