The Kindle Years (A Cautionary Tale)

I used to own an Amazon Paperwhite Kindle. It was fine. The hardware was lovely. But every time I wanted to do something as radical as read a book I didn’t buy from Amazon, I felt like I was committing a minor felony. The whole experience was designed to funnel you into their ecosystem, and I eventually gave up.¹

I’m also not a big fan of Amazon in general. The union-busting, the warehouse conditions, the way they’ve hollowed out retail and publishing alike. It all leaves a bad taste. Using a Kindle felt like a small daily endorsement of a company I’d rather not support. Life’s too short to feel guilty every time you open a book.

I also have a lot of physical books. Like, a lot. My shelves groan under the weight of unread paperbacks that silently judge me. But sometimes you just want to travel light or read in bed without a 600-page hardcover crushing your chest. Ebooks have their place.

Enter the Xteink X4

The X4 is a tiny, pocket-sized e-reader: 74 grams, about the size of a bank card that ate another credit card.² It’s got a magnetic back, which is neat, and physical buttons for navigation.

Physical buttons. Every e-reader should have them. I will die on this hill. Touchscreens on e-ink are laggy and frustrating. Give me tactile feedback or give me death.³

There’s no backlight, which might be a dealbreaker for some. For me? I read during the day like a normal human being or I turn on a lamp like my ancestors did. It’s fine.

The build quality is… decent. It’s not going to win any design awards, but it feels solid enough. For the price, I’m not complaining.

Software: The Good, the Bad, and the CrossPoint

The stock firmware is, to put it charitably, limited: two font sizes, a handful of formats, buttons that change function depending on what screen you’re on, with no labels to guide you. It’s like they designed the UX by throwing darts at a board.

But here’s where open source saves the day: CrossPoint Reader is a community-built firmware replacement that transforms the X4 from “frustrating novelty” to “genuinely excellent e-reader.”⁴ Better typography, more format support, Wi-Fi book uploads, KOReader sync—it’s everything the stock firmware should have been. You can flash it directly from your browser, which feels like witchcraft.

The CrossPoint community is active and passionate, and it’s a reminder that sometimes the best software comes from people who just want their devices to work properly.

The Calibre Workflow

Getting books onto the X4 is straightforward with Calibre. Convert, transfer via microSD or Wi-Fi (with CrossPoint), done. It’s the kind of workflow that makes you wonder why Amazon made everything so complicated.⁵

The DRM Problem (Or: Why Paying for Things Is Harder Than Stealing Them)

Here’s the part where I get slightly ranty.

Buying DRM-free ebooks is still weirdly difficult. Some publishers get it, but most major publishers still wrap their books in DRM that treats paying customers like criminals.

The irony is that removing DRM is trivially easy if you know where to look.⁶ So the only people inconvenienced by DRM are the people who actually paid for the book. Meanwhile, pirated copies float around the internet, DRM-free and ready to read on any device.

It’s baffling. The experience of paying for a book is more painful than just downloading it for free. This is not a sustainable model. Publishers, I am begging you: make it easier to give you money.

Currently Reading

I’m working through Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro right now. It’s devastating in the best way. The X4 has this lovely feature where it displays the book cover on the lock screen, which means I get to stare at the cover art every time I pick it up.

This has given me an idea: I might need to start creating optimised book covers specifically for e-ink displays—high contrast, clean lines, designed to look good in greyscale. A project for another day.

Looking Forward

I’m taking the X4 with me on a cycling trip to Norway soon. It’s small enough to slip into a jersey pocket, light enough that I won’t notice it, and rugged enough that it should survive being jostled around on gravel roads.

That’s the real test of a device like this: does it disappear into your life? The best tech is the tech you stop thinking about. So far, the X4 is getting there.