I bought my X4 from Ali and usb flashing is disabled so I flashed crosspoint using the SD card method which wasn't difficult. It's not like I'm going to patch it often, it's just mildly less convenient when I do.

I can also anecdotally say that the x3 I bought from Amazon in like June (seller was xteink official store) was flashable without any bypass needed.

Same for mine bought a week ago.

Thanks for the confirmation, you two. Amazon's dropping one off today with the rest of our order.

I've been using a 2012 Kindle Paperwhite that is long past its expiration date, and I've little interest in continuing with Kindles, so this is a toe in the water of alternatives.

Its pretty good if you can get an opds server going or are ok with dropping bools directly on the sd card. Its small enough that it just stays in my pocket and i read when i have time instead of doom scrolling

But yet, xteink is a partner at https://freeink.org/

Yeah but everyone buys from ali because it's much cheaper and you get more protection.

The ones from Xteink are more expensive. It's sneaky that they're trying to cash in on the success of the custom firmware that they had nothing to do with creating.

Why do the AliExpress ones lock the firmware? They have analytics in it or something?