The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader
blog.omgmog.net
blog.omgmog.net
I have a Kindle and a Kobo. They are sturdy devices. But the X4 is the one that is a genuine e-reader. Would not get it as my one and only e-reader though as you tend to miss the size and backlight of the larger ones.
What would I want from future iterations?
- backlight even if it compromises on battery a bit
- a bit more DPI
Everything else is good enough.
It's not the best reader I own, but it's the best reader I have on me at any given moment when I'm not laying in bed.
Alternatively if you wish to stick with the stock Kobo reader app it is possible to sync via a https://grimmory.org/ instance
This. The form factor is almost the right one for an e-reader. The battery lasts for weeks. It is so open that you could probably write your own firmware for it based on CrossPoint or similar for your own needs.
Needs some iterative development while ruthlessly culling requests for random features.
It truly is. It fits perfectly in one hand without stretching uncomfortably, so I can hold it for longer than any reading session I've had without making my hand get stiff. While holding it in the normal way, my thumb naturally rests on one of the side buttons, which I've mapped to "next page".
If I were to hold out my hand, and someone put an X4 in it, I wouldn't have to move a muscle and it'd be in the right position for me to read for hours with just the periodic button tap.
Everyone's different, of course. It's guaranteed to be too big or too small for others, and that's cool. For me it feels like someone custom designed it based on a model of my hand.
I've merged some working PRs onto my device and it's working great. I really needed a dictionary option because I like to quickly know the meaning of words as I read.
its fine. theres a few more things that could be nice (reading statistics for example) that other forks do have.
What it's not good at it showing any kind of diagrams, because even if the software was decent, it's a relatively tiny screen. I haven't even bothered trying to view a PDF on it and don't know if that's supported. For epubs I've uploaded to it through Calibre, it's utterly adequate.
Will buy the next one if it has a light.
only frontlight is possible.
They also have already announced the S4 that is basically the same device, a bit ticker with touch and backlight and running android.
but I really agree with you, I'd love to have a frontlight on it. That's literally all I'd wanted over the current device. No touchscreen necessary.
but between touchscreen + frontlight and neither, perhaps I'd be willing to have a touchscreen so long as the software is good (which something like crosspoint I'm sure would nail)
And Android means the device no longer runs on a microcontroller which has consequences for battery life etc. As long as they keep the original, minimal model active with minor QoL improvements, I guess it is fine.
the only funny thing about the X4 is reading it in bright sunlight. it will corrupt the image on the screen on page turn unless you shade it? something to do w/ older eInk screens and not having a UV Filter. weird, slightly annoying.
Its increased my reading 2-3x though!
https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader/issue...
GP has big plans.
I have a kindle for beach and travel as a good compromise size; I use my 10" tablet when I really settle in for reading, or when I read technical books with graphs or books with photographs etc. For my adhoc reader I use kindle app on my phone. What is the unique selling point of something like X4? I notice it attaches to the phone which seems bizarre, phone feels like a functional superset, so I must be missing something - is it battery life or less distractions or something else?
Thx! :)
I'm specifically wondering about the X4, which is the size of a phone, meant to be attached to the phone, but it's not a phone and crucially no backlight. Does it specifically fill a situation for people who don't want to carry a phone but will carry this? Or, for people who might carry x4 and a smart phone, why read on the x4?
Thx!
(also: hasn't the x4-v2 already been announced that is supposed to have a frontlight?)
that's the main for me: i also have a kobo and bringing it around with me is just too damn annoying.
being able to pocket this thing and read anywhere one handed is so nice.
- The microcontroller is so weak that you cannot add crappy features like more powerful e-readers are wont to do. This produces minimal distraction-free UIs. No messaging, no browsing.
- The form factor is the biggest win. It fits in a pocket and is great for the 5-10m you find when traveling or waiting somewhere. I cannot carry e-readers that way.
- It is great for fiction, and text-heavy non-fiction: history, philosophy etc. Stuff with a lot of images, tables, code blocks etc ... nope.
Price is also a factor here!
Sure I could read the same book on my phone, but it takes multiple steps to open the e-reader app on my phone. On top of that, there are half a dozen other things I could open on my way to opening up my e-reader app. With X4, I press the button on the side and I'm reading.
Is it the best ereader? Not at all. Reading whitepapers or programming books on it is a fools errand. It is great for anything that is mostly text. Novels are amazing on it. I've keep up with my read it later backlog by saving URLs with the Obsidian ReadItLater plugin and then using pan to convert the collection of markdown into an epub file.
The battery life is amazing. I've charged it once since getting on 3/27. I've read about 1500 pages (5 novels) since I got it (albeit I've stalled out in June by trying to finish a book I'm not too into).
It is a great compliment to a 10" tablet. Whereas a 7" reader tends to stay at home due to its size, the X4 gets tossed in my pocket and comes everywhere with me.
The whole sticking-it-to-the-back-of-your-phone i find a bit useless, but mine came with two metal rings so that I can stick it to other places.
I have one ring on the dashboard of my car so the X4 can hang there until i need to use it. Good for trips with many stops.
X4 is great - has usb-c charger and with the cover feels like an easy to pocket and bring everywhere reader. Does not fit on the back of an iphone. I assume the magnet layout works with popular android phones though.
X3 is also great, actually fits on the back of the phone with the magsafe - magnet is a _bit_ too weak. It does fall off in my pocket frequently but I haven't lost it yet. Does not have usb-c - has weird little magnetic 4 pin charger.
I will gift my X4 to my brother once I've loaded some more content to it.
I recommend this for anyone that wants to save web novels for offline reading https://github.com/lncrawl/lightnovel-crawler - Calibre will sync the epubs to the x4 and x3.
Use the crosspoint OS https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader
All that said... I do still use my kindle as default. More content accessible more easily, better syncing, backlight
There's also going to be an X4 Pro, which is an ESP32 reader too, and this seems to be an X4 with backlight and touch screen.
mite b cute
And the firmware is shitty but the community firmware is good.
And when you follow what the company does, you understand that the biggest selling point (the screen) is just there for reasons that are totally unrelated to creating a great product. It happened to be there because they randomly (economically, I guess) choose this screen and it happened to be good and have the right resolution for retro gaming.
None of their previous models had this advantage but more than that, none of the models that followed kept the advantages that made this device a banger.
It's exactly like if the company behind the device never understood how and why they created a community behind their devices.
For the xteink, I wouldn't be surprised for the next ones to be shittier, closed, and bloated, and probably for no reason.
I also built two quick hacks for it that people might like:
- https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFaPCStWYAAOj6f?format=jpg&name=...
- https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFaPCO8WIAASMEn?format=jpg&name=...
- https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFaPCPEXgAE3O4z?format=jpg&name=...
My two wishes are: to size it up so it is roughly the width of a modern smartphone (2.72" -> 2.8") and decrease bezel size. At these small sizes, even 1/2 to 3/4" screen size increase is a big deal in area gained, which leads to more comfort reading and less line scanning.
Hope they'll ship one with the size up 4.7" ED047TC1 display [1] instead.
[1] https://github.com/Xinyuan-LilyGO/LilyGo-EPD47/blob/esp32s3/...
There are e-readers that put a single word on the screen, this can fit plenty in a decent font size, you'll have to switch pages more often, but I haven't found that to be an issue, the button is very light to press and the page transition (with Crosspoint) is fast.
Using a touchscreen easily halves my effective intelligence. The frictions in both reading and typing are huge.
(Written from a desktop.)
I contacted support and they answered
"We would like to clarify that on e ink displays, text may appear lighter under very strong direct sunlight. Once the screen refreshes or you return to normal lighting conditions and turn a few pages, the text will fully recover. This behavior is related to the low power design of the display and does not cause any damage to the screen."
Personally, I've found that just moving the screen out of the sun (for example by turning it upside-down, or holding my hand in front of it) when refreshing a page is enough to prevent it.
Thanks for for sharing.
It's also cool that it's chip is just an ESP32.
Or it can be a little bit bulkier and just be a dedicated ereader that is shaped like a phone case. Either way works.
One of the images on the Amazon page for the reader has somebody holding one beside their laptop and if you look at the screen, it looks terrible. There are even words jammed together ("would be most suitable forthe job").
I love that it has physical buttons though. My reader is the Kindle Oasis and the buttons are one of my favorite features of the device. The Oasis layout engine and typography are both pretty good and I wonder if the X4 would end up feeling like a big downgrade.
It's easy to write a HTML & CSS layout engine to support most of the epub spec, but hard to do it well on such a constrained chip. Even things like nested lists and inline code snippets are a challenge.
Maybe expecting the X4 to look great is asking too much. It took Amazon years to get it right on Kindle. Hyphenation is a difficult task.
The custom firmware today is more than good enough, and the devices often sell for under $70.
And yet reading systems fail to do that.
IT IS VERY FRAGILE! The eink screen on my first broke while in my backpack. The company is generous, I bought a new one and they gave 35% off and included all accessories (reading light, case, extra protectors). Highly recommend.
Any thoughts?
But they do need editing, layout, design, marketing, etc, which are a significant part of the cost of a book. A book is never a solo endeavor by an author.
Digital publishing bypasses print, distribution, warehousing, and materials, but still includes those fixed costs.
Keep in mind that many publishers effectively act a bit like investors or VC, seeding a large number of publications in the hopes that a small number succeed. The name "Random House" was said by its founding publisher, Bennet Cerf to be "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random". As in music and cinema, a few "tentpole" projects support much of the rest of the enterprise.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_House#Company_history>.
I know people favor the X4 for the usb-c, and I'm all for universal charging cables. But in my experience the usb port is often the first component to fail in something like this. And that seems super annoying to replace. The pogo pins on the other hand are unlikely to fail. And the cable is not proprietary, you can get compatible cables on Amazon/etc.
https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader/relea...
Is there a ebook format that isn't just build arround the concept of a webbrowser?
A format that only supported
- headings
- paragraphs
- emphasis (bold/italics)
- bullets
- inline images
is good enough. A simple container with a TOC pointing to text blocks/files within it that can be processed very cheaply.
Unfortunately, with something like epub, you lose all the simplicity because you want to support every single feature even if rarely used.
In favor of the X3:
- Crisper text
- Whiter display
- Slightly better battery life
- Top-mounted power button (subjective)
In favor of the X4:
- Larger display
- Plain USB-C charging
- Slightly better custom firmware support
- Backward and forward button on the same side (subjective)
FWIW, the X3 requires a pogo pin cable, while the X4 requires a standard USB-C.
Anybody got any recommendations?
Thanks!
I love it and use it every day.
a usbc is so easy to come by, you're never going to have to wait for amazon to deliver the cable you need to charge this one device you own.
Looking fwd to my reader soon!
I'm guessing Ali-Express with the hope you get a genuine one.
I already have a standard and a backlit Nook Simple touch, so I really should just use them more before I buy another device
I loaded mine with cpr-vCodex. It has some useful features, and it gets updated almost daily. I find the “reading achievements” a bit gimmicky, but it’s otherwise a solid firmware option.
Only challenges I have are, I wish the MagSafe was a little stronger, it does come off when I put my phone in my pocket which, 9 times out of 10, means I just have 2 separate devices in my pocket.
1. Selection highlighting... I never use highlighting when reading fiction, but whenever I am not careful enough when turning a page, it'll go crazy with highlighting. Flashing screen, need to close the popup that has added the highlight, removing the highlight again etc.
2. Most of the time I don't want to click on a word to find out its meaning. It's sometimes useful, but I'd rather have it under menu to temporarily enable it. Same reason as before. My e-readers tend to prefer this often enough rather than taking the "next page" action.
3. Make "previous page" be small and not-under-my-finger. Ideally let me choose its position in a fairly precise way.
4. Easy access to accidental "scroll to page 900". I generally don't want it to happen and to be honest, I struggle to think of anybody who does. It can live in a single tiny faraway menu that is impossible to accidentally tap.
5. Swipe-left for previous page. It almost never happens when I want it to happen, so I'd rather turn it off.
Personal request to any e-book reader software engineers. Please save the position in the book to persistent storage on each page change or every few. At least if the e-reader has any chance of crashing at all, which has been the case with all the ones I have ever had. Yes, not all of them save it...
That's not to say that all the above things are universally bad UX. I think many of these are very useful, if reading non-fiction or having a different goal when reading such as learning a new language. It's just that they are less than brilliant if the goal is to read a book for entertainment in the most comfortable way possible with the fewest things going wrong by accidental taps.
Might be a tiny tinsy bit of purchase-anxiety as well - it'll be my first e-ink device after all, but what do I know...
Now that I see the X3 and X4 with unlocked firmware it's very VERY tempting.
Before I do buy it, did anybody manage to use it for phone mirroring? Get input e.g. BT keyboard? Does it fit and snap on the back on a Pixel 8?
Edit: I'm also always sceptical of when so many people post "I Just bought <x>, and I love it". It makes me wonder what they'll think after the honeymoon period is over
I carry four cards in a 3D printed sleeve which is two walls (0.8mm) thick.
When my state implements digital drivers licence I can take that down to three cards.
I just realised an elastic "card sock" would be even easier.
In a pinch, you can also connect it to a Bluetooth keyboard and use it as a development terminal. SSH terminal looks gorgeous on e-ink.
That sounds like an anti-feature. When I first bought an ereader over 15 years ago, I intentionally chose one that didn't support Wifi for this very reason. I want it primarily for reading documents.
But then again, I guess Boox is meant more to be a tablet than an ereader.
Also, genuinely curious - does having Android reduce the time between recharges? As an example, I read a whole book over 7 days, and didn't need to charge my Kobo (and modern Kobo battery life is not great).
I want Kobo to release an 8" color, but don't know if they ever will. I was considering Boox as an alternative, but I worry about battery life and Android. I wonder if my worry is misplaced.
it lasts a day if youre reading all day, a couple days with lighter use. I couldn't finish a whole book on a single charge even if its a small book. Not at my reading speed anyway.
As a comparison, I've already read 3 books on the xteink x4 and still have 60% of battery left. So yeah, android is good but these things need much better batteries to compete.
i wish there was just an SDK for building apps (i'll vibe code towards a great epub experience, i'm fine with that). and, i'm fine plugging it in via USB or even SCPing files over wifi. but, it sends my reading progress to a server every time i use it which is highly annoying and concerning. however, the form factor is sufficient.
i guess i was hoping it'd be more aligned with steam's direction with their steam machine.
That seems to be what crosspoint-reader is: https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader
The disabled usb is certainly a bummer. I wonder how they disabled it though – is there a hardware difference?
Locking and preventing flashing of firmware only happened in China.
My device was the China edition that was locked (USB firmware upload disabled), the memory card method worked fast and easy.
Reading from RoyalRoad or WebToons is hardly mentally stimulating, but I feel it's at least better than random tweets or vertical short form content. There are quite a few stories that I've come to really enjoy and look forward to reading when the new chapter comes out.
It's not like I've stopped reading books, but there is a lot of time between releases of a book series and each book requires quite a lot of time commitment, whereas a single web chapter require much less time to read.
Also, kinda sad but... tbh as I get older I've gotten a bit calcified in my literary habits; I'm now a bit reticent and less eager to discover new book series and have decided to stick to a few authors I'm more comfortable with (time requirement to discover if I like a new one is just too much). With web stories, just a few chapters let me know if I like the vibe, and picking/dropping stories has much less friction.
A device like the X4 would be ok for epubs downloaded from the internet, but for stuff like what I read now, due to its lack of internet connectivity [1] would mean I'd be reading LESS.
I'm not saying it SHOULD have internet... its purpose as a doomscroll-killer makes it obvious why it won't... just that these things have unintended consequences.
[1]: afaik, it has wifi but not an internet browser or app support that would allow constant linking/updating from such web sources.
Even with a web browser, einkbro for Android eink devices, it just never felt as good as epubs or just my phone somehow.
Well ordered the X4 to try anyways.
Pretty sure my credit card got harvested from either them or the website purchase though
They have an S4 coming out with frontlight and Android. Would be great if it supports scrolling like a Boox Palma but at 1/6 the price.
BRB, off to set up a "naming things as a service" startup.
I miss reading books on my ipod. I love the form factor of it.
If the Kompact works for you, no need. Different strokes and all that.
Just seeing it act as a trigger to read for me, especially when book cover as standby background
I'm trying to think in terms of small wins more and 1 minute spent creating something dumb or doing something not on a phone is 1 less minute creepy, greedy tech bros can extract your data for profit.