The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

I’ve had the Xteink X4 for a couple of months now, a £40 e-ink reader small enough to stick to the back of a phone. I’d seen a few posts about it (Khairul Selamat, Neil Brown, joelchrono, and moddedbear among them), so I got curious and ordered one. First impressions Out of the box, the X4 is lightweight, properly light, the kind where I’d forget it’s in my pocket. The display is crisp for its size, and the device ships with a branded 16GB microSD card (cute touch) plus a card reader and adhesive metal ring for MagSafe mounting. The microSD slot is awkward (I needed a stylus to push the card out, felt like I was doing something wrong). The stock OS defaults to Chinese, but the UI is navigable enough that I had it switched to English within a minute of blind fumbling. Marketing pushes the “stick it to your phone” angle hard. I’ve got a MagSafe-compatible case on my Pixel 7a, but that spot’s already taken by my card holder. Even if it wasn’t, the X4 mounts inverted for some reason…