Two Months With the XTeink X4: The Best E-Reader I Have Ever Owned
A follow-up to the e-reader rabbit hole that started it all, and the honest verdict after living with this tiny device every single day.
I have owned a lot of e-readers. The original Nook, back when Barnes and Noble was still trying to compete and we all thought the simple touch screen was futuristic. A Kindle that I used until the ecosystem started to feel more like a leash than a library. An iPad Mini, which I genuinely believed would solve everything and instead gave me the most expensive distraction I had ever purchased. Each one promised to be the last device I would ever need. Each one eventually let me down in ways I couldn’t always name at the time.
Two months ago, the XTeink X4 arrived on my doorstep. It weighs 74 grams. It has no app store, no touchscreen, no audiobooks, and no frontlight. It costs $69. And it is, without question, the best e-reader I have ever owned.
If you read The E-Reader Research Rabbit Hole That Led Me on the Path to Digital Minimalism, you know how I got here. You know about the spreadsheets and the Reddit threads at 11 PM and the slow realization that I had been asking entirely the wrong questions about what a reading device should do. This post is the follow-up I promised you. Two months of real, daily use. The honest truth about what it’s like to live with the device that does the least.
It Is Not Trying to Compete With Anyone, and That Is the Point
The first thing you notice about the XTeink X4 is that it knows exactly what it is. It is not a Kindle. It is not a Kobo. It is not an Android-based device pretending to be modest while quietly offering you an app store. It is a focused, intentional reading device, and it is completely at peace with that identity.
There is something quietly radical about a device that does not apologize for its limitations. It holds EPUBs and TXT files. It has physical page-turn buttons that make a satisfying click. The e-ink screen looks like paper. And that is all.
When I first started researching this device, I saw people dismissing it as too basic, too niche, not worth the investment. After two months of living with it every day, I think that criticism misses the point entirely. Not every device needs to do everything. The X4 does exactly what it was built to do, and it does it beautifully.
What Two Months of Daily Use Actually Looks Like
I carry this device everywhere. It lives in my purse when I’m out and in my house tote alongside my journals and fountain pens, tucked into the same pocket I used to reserve for my phone. It has been to coffee shops, waiting rooms, my back porch during morning tea, and the couch every evening before bed. I have read in natural daylight, by lamp light, and with the clip-on book light on the nights where I keep going past when I should stop.
The portability is not just a spec on a product page. It genuinely changes how and where I read. Because it fits in the smallest bag, I always have it. Because it weighs almost nothing, I never resent bringing it. Because there is no notification badge waiting for me when I pick it up, I actually open it and read instead of getting sidetracked. I squeeze in pages during spare moments I used to fill with scrolling.
This is not a device for long, dedicated reading sessions only. It is a device for the stolen ten minutes in the parking lot, the slow lunch break, the quiet hour before the house wakes up. It meets you where you are.
The Intentional Limitations Are the Feature, Not the Bug
Here is what I have come to understand after sixty-plus days with this device. The things that might look like weaknesses on paper are the entire reason it works.
No apps means no distractions. There is no temptation to check anything because there is nothing to check. I pick it up, I read, I put it down. That simplicity sounds almost too obvious, and yet it is profoundly different from every other reading experience I have had on a connected device.
No touchscreen means more intentional interaction. You navigate with buttons. You make deliberate choices. There is no absentminded swiping, no accidental taps opening menus I did not mean to open. The physical buttons create a tactile, grounded experience that connects to the same part of me that loves a good fountain pen over a ballpoint.
No frontlight means I am aware of my reading environment. I read by natural light when I can, which has quietly trained me to notice the quality of light in a room, the way afternoon sun changes, the warmth of a lamp versus overhead lighting. It sounds small and it has become one of my favorite things about using this device.
No audiobooks means I am fully committed to visual reading during my X4 time. I still listen to audiobooks for many things. But the X4 has become where I show up for the books that deserve my full attention.
The Sideloading Ritual Became Something I Look Forward To
When I wrote the original post, I predicted that loading books manually through Calibre might become a meaningful ritual. I was right, and it has exceeded that expectation.
Every Sunday evening I sit down with my journal, review what I read during the week, and curate what goes onto the device next. I remove finished books. I think about what mood I want to cultivate in the coming week. I drag and drop specific EPUBs with intention. It takes maybe fifteen minutes and it has become one of my favorite small rituals, a quiet act of self-knowledge that forces me to ask what I actually want to read instead of buying whatever the algorithm surfaces.
This is the part that separates the X4 from every other reading device I have owned. It refuses to let you consume passively. It asks something of you first.
How It Compares to Everything That Came Before
I want to be honest here for anyone who is in the same research spiral I was in two months ago.
My original Nook was simple and I loved it, but the ecosystem eventually became limiting and the device aged out of support. My Kindle felt like a reading device until Amazon slowly turned it into a storefront I could not escape. My iPad Mini was genuinely great for many things and genuinely terrible for focused reading because it was also great for everything else.
The X4 wins not because it has better specs than any of those devices. It wins because it has made a different set of promises entirely. It promised to help me read without distraction, to give me ownership over my books, to support the slow and intentional reading life I am building in 2026. It has kept every single one of those promises.
Who the XTeink X4 Is For (and Who It Is Not For)
This device is not a replacement for a primary e-reader if you rely on Kindle Unlimited, Kobo’s ecosystem, or library borrowing through Libby. I’ll be using my iPad Mini for Libby.
If app support and syncing and advanced customization are things you genuinely use and love, this will feel like a step backward.
It is a companion device, and a transformative one. It works best alongside a Kindle or Kobo for people who already do most of their reading on those platforms but want a dedicated space for the books that deserve full presence. If you know you would read more if your reading device were not also your distraction device, this is the answer.
The niche-ness is the point. It was built for a specific kind of reader who wants a specific kind of experience. I am that reader. Two months in, getting this device made complete sense for the reading life I am building.
The Verdict After Sixty Days
I have owned e-readers for years across multiple platforms and price points. None of them have made me feel the way the XTeink X4 does, which is a little like holding a very small, very beloved paperback. The weight. The click of the page turn. The absence of everything asking for my attention.
It changed how and where I read. It deepened my slow reading practice. It gave me back something I did not know I had lost: the experience of picking up a reading device and actually reading.
If you have been on the fence since my original post, this is the follow-up that tells you the experiment worked. It is still my favorite device. It fits in my smallest bag, it lives in my Analog Bag next to my fountain pens, and it has traveled with me every single day for two months.
The device that does the least became the device that gave me the most.
Want to go back to where this all started? Read The E-Reader Research Rabbit Hole That Led Me on the Path to Digital Minimalism and follow the full journey from spreadsheet-obsessed researcher to devoted X4 reader.
~ Chrystal
