Like many childhood readers, I’ve struggled with maintaining a reading habit into my adult years. And that sucks; I love reading.
But when it comes down to it, there are just too many distractions to manage to read much more than half an hour before going to sleep.
That is, unless you cheat with a sneaky little gadget.
When I saw the Xteink X4 (catchy name, I know), I knew I had to get one.
It’s a miniature e-reader, small enough to fit on the back of my phone — which is handy, because it also contains a magnet it can use to magnetically attach to Qi2 smartphones.
The advantage is immediate and obvious. Flip my phone over, and I can start reading almost immediately.
It’s a great idea, and with an asking price around a humble $60 from AliExpress, it’s one I was eager to try out.
Well, it’s arrived. What do I think of it?
It’s been an interesting time, but I’ve enjoyed it so far.
I didn’t think an e-reader could replace my smartphone — but now I’m not so sure
Minimalist phones are here, but they’re not called phones
We had a troubled start
Okay, starting it up, I was a little bit taken aback. And that’s because it was entirely in Chinese.
I really should have expected this. After all, it’s a cheap product I grabbed directly from AliExpress.
But no modern tech-head is put off by a bit of Chinese.
A liberal helping of Google Lens later, I had switched the language to English and I experienced my second problem.
My magnetic e-reader that lives on my phone doesn’t fit on my phone.
Again, this is largely my fault.
All the promotional material showed the Xteink X4 with an iPhone Pro Max, but I’d done the measurements, and I was confident it would fit.
And technically, it did fit. I’d just forgotten that the magnets would be in a specific place. So it either sat sideways or cocked over the camera visor. Not ideal.
But aha, there was another easy fix. The Xteink X4 came with a pair of magnetic stickers, and a bit of careful sticking later, it fit perfectly.
Honestly, this sort of jank is common with a device this cheap, and it wasn’t hard to fix. So I held none of this against the Xteink X4.
But the reading? It would definitely have to work decently well for that.
Not exactly expansive, but it works well
I knew going in that putting books onto the X4 would be a bit of a faff, but popping a microSD into my computer and putting files on it isn’t too arduous.
The file names were in Chinese, but again, it wasn’t hard to figure out where everything needed to go.
Plus, since you have to find the file you want in the X4’s file browser, you can just stick everything in the root folder if you like.
When you’re in, the reading experience is … good, but still basic.
There’s no touchscreen, so everything is controlled by buttons. You either use the volume rocker-style buttons to turn the page, or the right-hand pair below the display.
A press of the confirmation key opens the settings panel, where you can change to dark mode, alter the font, access chapters, and change settings, like turning on Bluetooth.
Reading itself is a bit of a mess.
You don’t get a lot of words on the page, even with the smallest font available, and the seemingly forced justified orientation means there are big gaps and formatting errors throughout your books.
It’s readable, though, and due to the small size, it feels like you’re breezing through a lot of text very quickly. You turn the pages a lot, and that constant movement spurs you to keep reading. It’s not a bad thing in an e-reader at all.
I can read it from the back of my phone, but it’s easier to press the buttons if I take it off. I suspect I’ll keep the X4 on the back of my phone and remove it to read, rather than keep it on there all the time.
But holding it is no hardship. It’s extremely light, feels solid, and while it’s slippery, it’s so small it doesn’t matter too much.
And don’t worry if you don’t have a phone with magnets in it because I’ve kept the X4 in my pocket too, and it’s so small that it just disappears. It’s so portable, and I love that.
It’s early days, but I would buy this again
I was skeptical when I bought this. Getting any sort of tech product for so little money always seems suspect, and this was no different.
But it’s so cheap that I was happy to give it a shot.
And I’m glad I did, because, so far, the Xteink X4 is exactly what I thought it would be and exactly what I wanted.
It’s never going to be one of the best e-readers, but I don’t need it to be.
It’s a small and cheap e-reader that nestles into the back of my phone, so it’s ready when I want it.
There’s no backlight, which hurts, and it’s janky as all hell — but none of this puts me off because I’ve bought a tiny e-reader that fits onto the back of my phone for $60.
I’ve not had much chance to play with it properly yet, but I am loving it so far.
My initial impressions are very strong, and it’s not because it’s a polished product or pushes the envelope in an exciting way.
No, it’s just a simple device that does a simple job. And that’s more than good enough for me so far.
