Ever since I bought the reMarkable 2 and started using it daily for my personal and work notes, I had been wishing that reMarkable would release a smaller device that would also be more convenient for reading. Something more suited for reading ebooks, something that the reMarkable 2 is not great for, especially on the go.
reMarkable announced the “Paper Pro Move” and I was beyond excited, but after I cooled down and watched a couple of reviews I was convinced that it wasn’t a device for me. The high price and the mixed reviews were two factors that made me stop and reconsider. I started looking for other small eInk devices that would primarily be small enough to carry every day with me everywhere I go and would be good for reading ebooks (duh). It’s autumn 2026 and it has been one year since I bought myself a tiny little gadget called Xteink X4 and I have to honestly say that it has saved my reading habit.
Initial setup and problems
There are multiple ways to put EPUBs on the Xteink. You can use a micro SD card, or you can transfer your books over wifi. Since I have a card reader I put a bunch of books on it that I had already read, just to see how it worked. After the book was indexed it opened. It had all the features like jump to chapter. Everything looked nice and here I was re-reading Harry Potter again and unfortunately when I start a book series I have to finish it, so fast forward a couple of weeks and I was already on the third book. Everything looked OK until I tried a book that was not in English and had characters with diacritics. After I was done with the Harry Potter series I wanted to read the new Witcher book “Rozcestí krkavců”. I opened the book and immediately knew something was wrong. The font did not support the Czech language and I was greeted with a bunch of []. I thought, no problem, the Xteink supports uploading a different font so I downloaded a bunch and started testing. The problems did not end with just the font though. After I found a font that actually displayed all the characters, the words in the book were still messed up in various ways. The words would be split incorrectly at the end of the line. Words would be missing spaces in between them sometimes and even after trying different settings I was not able to figure it out.
Converting the eBooks
After doing some research on the internet, I found you are able to use a tool like “EPUB to XTC Converter” to convert the EPUB to Xteink’s own format XTC where each page is basically an image of the exact size to fit the screen, with all the fonts, hyphenation and word formatting baked in. This worked just fine so for the time being I was happy with the result and it only took some extra time to convert the book I wanted to read next before sending it to the Xteink. I started the Witcher series again but this time I was able to resist the urge to go through all nine books in the main series.
Nothing beats the physical buttons
Autumn moved to winter, and since I spend a lot of time outside walking, I greatly appreciated one feature that the Xteink has over my iPhone. You probably guessed it already, yes, it’s the buttons!!! The X4 does not have a touch screen and that’s a good thing. The actual buttons came in handy as I was able to read a book while wearing gloves, while walking or sitting in the local park.
Reading in the downtime instead of scrolling
The X4 is tiny. I take it with me everywhere I go and any time there is downtime, instead of using the phone, checking notifications or scrolling social networks, I find myself reaching for the Xteink even for just a couple of minutes. And this stacks up quickly, a couple of pages on the way to work, one chapter with coffee during break time, two chapters in between work meetings that are back to back, a couple of chapters while my daughter sleeps in the stroller after lunch. One book finished, another one started and let’s go again. It definitely helped at the beginning while getting familiar with the device that I was reading books that I had already finished so it was easy to pick up where I’d left off. After finishing Witcher I moved to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in Czech, books that I had already read in English and Slovak but I found out that reading books in another language is always a good reason to pick up my favorites again for a re-read. I was getting annoyed by the XTC conversions and some features that you lose when not using the EPUB (like jump to chapter etc.).
CrossPoint reader to the rescue
My friends who also bought into the Xteink hype reached out to me about a new community driven, open-source firmware called “CrossPoint Reader”. It promised many cool things like better typography, working hyphenation, more options for fonts, sizes, spacings, easier to use interface and many more things and now that I’ve flashed my X4 I can tell you it delivers on all of the promises. I can’t believe I waited for so long to install it on my device but if you are new to Xteink or if you own any other compatible eInk reader I highly recommend you check it out. My books work now without any tinkering!
Final count
Winter moved to spring, spring moved to summer and I picked up a new book series that had been sitting for ages in my book backlog, the series by Frank Herbert, the legendary “Dune”. It felt like a fitting choice for the hot summer and I have to say reading Dune during a heatwave in Europe was quite an experience. I’m currently on the sixth book in the series, “Chapterhouse: Dune”. When I do a final count of the books I’ve read I end up with 18 books in one year all read mainly on the Xteink with occasional late night reading on my iPhone (as the X4 does not have a backlight). I feel like this device reignited my passion for reading and even though most of the books I’ve read this year have been re-reads, I enjoyed every minute of it. With the “Dune” series now in progress I believe I will be able to pick up more new series in the near future.
If you wish to follow my reading journey, I’ve started building my library on oliverpolka.cz @ bookhive.buzz, which is a Goodreads alternative built on top of the AT Protocol. You can also expect more about the AT Protocol here in the near future as it’s an exciting piece of technology.