This Wallet-Sized E-Reader Is My “tech Update of the Year.”
One of the often-overlooked truths of being a tech reviewer is that you have to test, recommend—and sometimes even keep!—gadgets you’d never buy yourself because you can’t justify their price. That’s why I usually devote a significant portion of my reviews to discussing price: I love cutting-edge gadgets as much as the next geek, but I have two kids and live in the most expensive city in America. As much as I admire the Boox Palma 2 Pro , my budget doesn’t allow me to afford a niche e-reader for $400.
That’s why the Xteink X4 e-reader , a minimalist 4.3-inch e-reader, is my tech update for 2025: it’s a device that has no illusions of grandeur. It doesn’t aim to replace your phone. It doesn’t aim to have the smoothest screen technology. It doesn’t aim to run games or apps or sync seamlessly with your phone. It simply aims to be a tiny, inexpensive e-reader that works well enough and is small enough to carry with you anywhere.
The main thing is simplicity.
As I made clear in my review , the Xteink X4 is in no way a competitor to the Palma 2 Pro (or the regular Kindle, for that matter). It has a weak processor and no backlight. Due to its digital rights management system, you probably won’t be able to use it to read all the Kindle books you already own ( though that’s essentially Amazon’s fault ). Loading ebooks onto it is quite a hassle, and once loaded, they may not look very good, as the current software can’t even display paragraph indents or italics.
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But it costs less than $50, and once set up, it does the same job as the more expensive device: it lets me easily carry my library around so I can read books instead of staring at my phone. But because it’s so small—about 25% smaller and thinner than my iPhone 14—it does this better than any other device I’ve tried.
Wonderful community
The Xteink X4 isn’t just a device; it’s also a fun app, though admittedly, much of this is thanks to the vibrant online community that has formed around it. The device has only been available for a few months, but it already has its own active subreddit, where geeky users help each other with FAQs, troubleshooting, and creating image galleries for screensavers. They’ve developed tools and shortcuts to work around the device’s limited functionality, from the Calibre plugin, which optimizes EPUB files for the Xteink X4 , to an online tool that automatically converts them into much more beautiful image files . Several people are even working on a completely new firmware that will replace the merely functional firmware.
The Xteink X4 is a no- brainer —it’s perfectly usable right out of the box, once you get used to features like navigating its slightly confusing menus with somewhat unintuitive physical buttons—but it’s a joy to connect with others who are passionate about improving its performance. In their extreme dedication to a niche device, these people are reviving the spirit of the old internet, driven by a sense of community rather than an all-knowing algorithm. Like the current retro popularity of cassette tapes , the Xteink X4 makes everything better by being a little worse.