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This gadget—and free software—makes e-reading fun again

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In . At first blush, it sounds like a canonical example of a gizmo the world could live without. The device in question is a truly diminutive e-reader designed to snap magnetically to the back of your phone—you know, the one that can already run a variety of e-book apps. It has no direct access to an e-book store, complicating the essential task of procuring stuff to read. Furthermore, its onboard software is so crude you might wonder if it was engineered to ensure buyer’s remorse. And yet I am delighted with the Xteink X4 Pro I bought last month. It turns out that yes, I do want to carry an e-reader in the same pocket as my phone. Like Amazon’s Kindles and other better-known contenders, those from China-based Xteink are optimized for reading, with paper-like screens and the ability to run for weeks between charges. The fact that they aren’t hooked up to an e-book store turns out not to be a catastrophe. The Xteink X4 Pro clings magnetically to the back of iPhone 16 Pro (with a little overhang at the bottom). [Photo: Harry McCracken] Most important, it’s simple to replace Xteink’s underwhelming software with a free, community-created open-source alternative that’s much, much better. The unexpected bottom line: If an e-reader’s ultimate purpose is to make reading books so easy you do more of it, this might be the best one I’ve ever owned, all the way back to the original 2007 Kindle . I learned about Xteink’s e-readers in January, when my friend Jason Snell reviewed a previous version. But I resisted splurging on one until the $99 X4 Pro came along. It’s the first with an illuminated screen, a feature I consider essential for bedtime reading. It also has the company’s first touchscreen and its largest battery. Other than those updates, the X4 Pro‘s appeal rests on the same foundation as Xteink’s other models, which include the X4 Classic (no light or touchscreen) and the even dinkier X3. At 69 by 111 by 5.95mm and 72 grams, it looks like a Kindle or Kobo that shrank in the wash, or maybe a particularly sleek PalmPilot model. (That’s 2 3/4″ by 4 3/8″ by 15/64″ and 2 1/2 oz.) Even my iPhone 16 Pro suddenly seems unwieldy by comparison. Sadly, Xteink achieved the X4 Pro’s slim profile in part by denying it a USB-C port for charging. Instead, it uses a magnetic charging adapter that is easy to lose and hard to keep firmly attached to the e-reader. It’s the only thing about the hardware I resoundingly dislike. Conventional e-readers are too bulky to tote unless you have specific plans to use them. That helps explain why beach reading is the archetypal use case. My X4 Pro, by contrast, really does go everywhere, either stuck to my iPhone or loose in a pocket. I was worried it would be too small, since it shows only a couple of paragraphs at a time. But holding it in one hand and turning pages by pressing a button with my index finger turns out to be as effortless as reading gets. In sleep mode, my X4 Pro shows the cover of the book I’m currently reading. One long press, and I’m back where I left off. [Photo: Harry McCracken] That still leaves the question: Why not just read e-books on your phone? You may already see the answer coming. On a phone, reading books competes with a cacophony of flashier, more pulse-quickening diversions, as well as mundane temptations such as checking your email. Even if you do your best to stay focused on reading, you will likely be distracted by notifications from other apps jostling for your attention. None of this can happen on Xteink’s devices. There are no other apps, no notifications, no way to do anything with Wi-Fi except transfer e-books from another device. The resulting tranquility is the scarcest of commodities in modern computing, whether you’re sneaking in a few pages while waiting in a line somewhere or putting away a chapter or two as you wind down the day. (I have been doing both.) As I mentioned, however, Xteink’s built-in software is really rudimentary. In fact, when I opened my first book, the font rendering was so crude that I wondered if it was some sort of bug. That didn’t faze me: I was already planning to ditch the X4 Pro’s stock firmware for an open-source alternative called CrossPoint . Created by a developer named Dave Allie shortly after Xteink released its first e-reader last year, CrossPoint is now regularly updated by a community of coders. It provides the X4 Pro, its siblings, and a few other tiny e-readers with the software they deserve, with upgrades such as elegant typography and the ability to tweak the interface in numerous ways. Rather than being overloaded with features, CrossPoint mirrors the minimalism of Xteink’s hardware. Its uncluttered interface never gets in the way of reading, which is more than I can say for my iPhone’s e-book apps. When my X4 Pro is in sleep mode, it displays the cover of the book I’m currently reading on its screen. With one long press on the power button, I return to where I left off. Shortly after my X4 Pro arrived, CrossPoint solved one of Xteink’s biggest limitations by releasing software that lets you read e-books you’ve bought from Kobo’s store. It also recently began supporting Libby, a free service that lets you check out e-books with a library card. These options require installing plug-ins and tapping into your e-reader via a browser on another device (I use my iPad). Other reading options include seeking out books that are free of Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls, gorging on free public-domain ones , and stripping the DRM from copy-protected books. The last act violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act but hurts no one if you’re only doing it to read books you’ve paid for. Getting books onto an Xteink e-reader still requires more steps than buying them right on a Kindle or Kobo. But with CrossPoint’s new Kobo and Libby compatibility, almost anything you might want to read is available. And the fact that the X4 Pro is devoid of the promotional elements of an on-device e-bookstore makes it feel even more like a temple to reading rather than a mere vehicle for digital commerce. CrossPoint’s software gives Xteink’s e-readers the typography they deserve. [Photo: Harry McCracken] Now, on many devices, installing alternative firmware is an act of reckless derring-do. It can feel as if you’ve decided to perform surgery on yourself and are hoping to figure it out as you go along. CrossPoint isn’t like that at all. You plug the e-reader into a Mac or Windows PC using a USB cable and click a button on CrossPoint’s website and wait a minute or two. If you can update your phone’s OS, you can do this. If CrossPoint doesn’t offer a feature you might like, that’s not the end of the story. Several independent development teams have used it as the basis of their own Xteink-compatible firmware: The most prominent such alternative, CrossInk , adds features such as reading stats and a Focus Reading option that boldfaces certain characters in words to help guide you through text. This abundance of operating system options sets Xteink’s e-readers apart from more familiar hardware. Custom firmware is available for Kindle and Kobo devices, but caters to a tiny and geeky sliver of their user bases. Google has lately been making it harder to build alternative OSes for its Pixel phones. Do I even need to mention that Apple will never let you put someone else’s OS on an iPhone or iPad? Even Xteink didn’t instinctively warm to CrossPoint. Earlier this year, it appeared to be girding itself to prevent users from installing the software . Apparently, it’s since realized that CrossPoint and its variants are selling points. The company now touts its devices’ “unlocked firmware freedom” on its website. Maybe Xteink e-readers would be even better if they simply came with CrossPoint preinstalled. I’m not so sure, though. We live in an era when many companies exert so much control over the products they sell that even cars don’t feel like we truly own them. Any evidence that the future won’t be increasingly locked down and enshittified is encouraging in itself. Getting to decide for myself which software to put on my X4 Pro was thrilling. The resulting hardware/software combo certainly showcases open-source software’s awesome potential. But the best proof of its success is that its unusual backstory fades away when I’m using it for its intended purpose: getting lost in a book. You’ve been reading Plugged In , Fast Company ’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on fastcompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at [email protected] with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky , Mastodon , and Threads , and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company OpenAI says the AGI era has begun. AI researchers aren’t so sure GPT-6 Astra is remarkably capable. But experts say its benchmark results don’t prove artificial general intelligence has arrived. 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