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.

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.