The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader(blog.omgmog.net) |
The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader(blog.omgmog.net) |
Just seeing it act as a trigger to read for me, especially when book cover as standby background
- 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=...
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.
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.
They also have already announced the S4 that is basically the same device, a bit ticker with touch and backlight and running android.
Will buy the next one if it has a light.
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.
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...
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'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.
I also built two quick hacks for it that people might like:
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
Alternatively if you wish to stick with the stock Kobo reader app it is possible to sync via a https://grimmory.org/ instance