I'm with you on every bit. I love my Kobo Libra 2 and it lives on my nightstand table. It's an excellent reader. The X4 with CrossPoint is an alright reader, but I've been chewing through books on my morning commute because it fits in my jacket pocket and I can have it out on the train without bumping into other people.

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.

> It's not the best reader I own, but it's the best reader I have on me at any given moment

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.

> The form factor is almost the right one for an e-reader.

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.

That was the big surprising win for me too, it just fits so comfortably in the hand

crosspoint has started developing a little slower now that its in a really usable state.

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.

Does your reading position sync up between the two devices?

Not the commenter you were replying to, but I have both a Kindle and a X4. No, it does not, but searching for a unique enough phrase (just two or three words) on the current page gets you there fast enough.

If you install koreader on the kobo, crosspoint on the x4 and create a free koreader sync account (or host your own sync sever): yes - but on the x4 you need to manually trigger syncs

Alternatively if you wish to stick with the stock Kobo reader app it is possible to sync via a https://grimmory.org/ instance

As someone who also juggles multiple readers, I find it easier to have a different book per device. Otherwise I would waste too much time trying to sync between the two.

Yes. I read multiple books in parallel. Each on a different reader. So syncing is not something I usually need though I did build myself a local sync server for fun.

I also primarily use Kobo e-readers right now but I've been wanting something smaller for an EDC. I think this thread is selling me on it.

I bought it because it was comparatively dirt cheap and was hackable. I was delighted at how nice it actually was to use. I figured it'd be crappy in some ways, but, you know, at least it was cheap. To the contrary, it's perfectly fine and does a great job at letting me flip through ebooks.

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.

There are rumors they will release a V2 Pro version with touch and backlight in the second half of this year.

They also have already announced the S4 that is basically the same device, a bit ticker with touch and backlight and running android.

It has perfectly usable buttons. Adding touch feels like straying from the core proposition to have a minimal reader.

if its still as open, I'm pretty sure the touchscreen can be worked out to work well.

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)

Yeah I really like not having a touchscreen that I have to worry about bumping while I'm reading, a backlight is the only addition I would enjoy to the current x4

I love the buttons, would loath a touchscreen on this size format. Just add a backlight!

Every item you add to the device adds a failure mode. Light is fine. Touch ... I don't know. I like the tactile feel of buttons.

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.

It was probably a decade ago, but I used to have this extremely cheap e-reader that ran off AA batteries, used a monochrome LCD screen (no lighting) and was based on a microcontroller. If you let the batteries die and waited too long to replace them, you had to reflash the software on it. I think it only handled mobi format, but it might have been epub.

Not being lighted is what has kept me from trying it. If they do add lighting I hope it is a front light and not a back light. Hard to beat a front lit e-ink display for reading. Bonus points for warmth settings.

Its not physically possible to have eink (based on inked beads, like the current e-reader has) and backlight.

only frontlight is possible.

Great news, but these are still entirely unlit.

All of this. It's a solid device. I like it. It won't replace my Kobo, but it has it's place in my tech lineup.

Will buy the next one if it has a light.

I love my X4 as well, and would love a backlight. Crosspoint and its downline forks are great.

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!

FYI you might be using an older version of crosspoint. It now has a software fix for the fading issue built in

https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader/issue...

Do you know what the maximum SD card size that it'll support? I'm especially interested if a 1TB card will work.

How many books do you want to fit on that thing? :o

I thought the compressed size of the LLM book corpus was a mere 100-200GB.

GP has big plans.

Wikipedia is ~60GB!

512 GB according to the manual, but it probably depends on the card.

Question to X4 owners - what is the benefit over a smartphone?

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 thought the same thing until I got a kindle. It just feels different. The eink display is really nice to look at.

As I said, I have a kindle :).

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!

It's way smaller than modern phones, though - I clip mine to the back of my Samsung (magsafe case) and it only blocks one of the five cameras. (phone: 288g xtelink x4: 75g.)

(also: hasn't the x4-v2 already been announced that is supposed to have a frontlight?)

(having it right there mostly serves as a physical token/reminder that I don't want to get sucked in to my social media and other phone apps as much, so if I'm just using it to fill "politely waiting" time I can just grab the x4 instead. I also have a trivial pandoc-generated epub todo list as the first document, though that would work better as a crosspoint fork/feature really...)

You read on a phone and on a tablet, so the X4 probably isn't for you. I hate reading for long periods on LCD screens. I have to do it all day at work and I don't want to do it at home. I read on a kindle unless I really need a computer screen for photos or graphs. I am just not going to pull out my phone to read a book, so an X4 sized device makes it easier to have a book with me. Since phone reading doesn't bother you, I doubt you would get much out of an X4.

it's pocketable!

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 e-ink screen is great for reading. The feeling of ink on paper it produces cannot be replicated on any other screen. Not to my satisfaction.

- 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.

Less distractions, yes, but mainly it's the size and e-ink display.

A single-function book is your window to the world. A phone is the world's window to you.

I kinda prefer oled screens so for me a foldable phone is much nicer than a kindle. Especially at night.

I won't hesitate to give this to my children, in a year or two when they are reading more fluently and don't need lots of pictures.

Price is also a factor here!

it is small, has absolutely no possibility to distractions like phone. none.

I carry my phone and my X4 in the same pocket. Whenever I feel like doom-scrolling, I take out the X4 and read a chapter in a book instead. It is excellent for taking back time to read that I lose to my phone.

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.

x4 pro will come with backlight and touch screen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REKdjxYtMrI

I have the Kobo Libra Color and the contrast on the X4 is much much better.

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.

You can always install KOReader on Kindle to get the painless wireless transfer as well. It can even sync wirelessly with Calibre.