Reading, Tinkering, and Typography on the X4
← All stories
Xteink X4

Reading, Tinkering, and Typography on the X4

← All stories

Since when

I heard about Xteink from various tech YouTubers, after Amazon stopped supporting their old Kindles. I never owned an ereader before, but I keep up with the latest tech news. After much research, and seeing this active community of tinkerers and bookworms on the subreddit, I got my X4 from Amazon!

How I use it

Having always read physical books when I was younger, but then falling off as life begun, I've been getting back into reading on the X4. I love the concept of being distraction free on a dedicated companion device, and the E Ink display is just like paper. Instead of scrolling through Google News on my phone, and getting distracted by notifications and other things, I can read for a bit. I'm also a tinkerer and love modding various mobile devices, to see what they can do. I've been enjoying trying out a few firmwares, now settled on vCodex with its additional tracking and gamification features, along with CrossPoint's features. I'm also now looking more into the world of typography, browsing through Google Fonts for the perfect font, making sure they're legible for comfortable reading, and ensuring support for Hebrew and Extended Latin characters for the version of The Scriptures I read. I like finding styles that fit different genres of books (sci-fi & fantasy), and then finding some fonts have their own website where they tell their story of how and how they were created, making it more meaningful to read a book with them. I'm still new to ereaders, so now that I'm out of those rabbit holes, I've been doing a lot more reading. Hope to make this more of a habit while breaking others!

What I love

I love the active community of tinkerers and bookworms, and the positive relationship with the company behind it. The fact that anyone, regardless of whether they're "good with computers" or not, are able to install community-written custom firmware on this thing is impressive. I believe a device's active community are what really make it shine with long-term unlimited possibilities.

What I'd change

Looking toward the future, would love if future iterations of Xteink devices had USB-C, though it looks like the company is leaning toward the less-common Pogo pin.

Tip for new members

When using custom firmware, make sure your ePUB files have the correct title in their metadata, not just their filename. Most sources should have the correct metadata, but when I converted and removed DRM from my Kindle books, their titles were random strings of characters, which showed up in CrossPoint's interface and vCodex's statistics. Calibre can be used to edit the book file's metadata.

CabeoC

More photos

Story photo
Story photo

12 members have shared their Xteink story. Yours could be next.

More from the community

All stories →

For members

Your story belongs here.

Takes 3 minutes. Goes live instantly. No review, no wait. Your honest take — how you use your device, what you love, and what you'd tell your past self.

✍️ Write my story