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The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

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Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#71

Post by criddell »

azertify wrote: post #66
criddell wrote: post #40

I've looked at this device and I wonder how good the layout engine is. Screenshots never show text with any hyphenation going on which makes me wonder if it even supports hyphenation. One of the images on the Amazon page for the reader has somebody holding one beside their laptop and if you look at the screen, it looks terrible. There are even words jammed together ("would be most suitable forthe job"). I love that i…

The layout engine is limited. It does flow text quite well, but when I had mine (the screen broke a few months ago) I was working on adding more features to the rendering engine. It's easy to write a HTML & CSS layout engine to support most of the epub spec, but hard to do it well on such a constrained chip. Even things like nested lists and inline code snippets are a challenge.

That must be why Amazon does a lot of pre-processing on their server. They know what device they are sending to and can tailor the file for that device.

Maybe expecting the X4 to look great is asking too much. It took Amazon years to get it right on Kindle. Hyphenation is a difficult task.

Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#72

Post by harrisonjackson »

I have the X4 and the X3 (newer smaller one). I will get whatever the next version is if it has a backlight or more DPI / support for smaller font.

X4 is great - has usb-c charger and with the cover feels like an easy to pocket and bring everywhere reader. Does not fit on the back of an iphone. I assume the magnet layout works with popular android phones though.

X3 is also great, actually fits on the back of the phone with the magsafe - magnet is a _bit_ too weak. It does fall off in my pocket frequently but I haven't lost it yet. Does not have usb-c - has weird little magnetic 4 pin charger.

I will gift my X4 to my brother once I've loaded some more content to it.

I recommend this for anyone that wants to save web novels for offline reading https://github.com/lncrawl/lightnovel-crawler - Calibre will sync the epubs to the x4 and x3.

Use the crosspoint OS https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader

All that said... I do still use my kindle as default. More content accessible more easily, better syncing, backlight

Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#73

Post by dv35z »

Does anyone know where you can buy an HDMI-compatible e-ink display, which is about the size of an A5 notebook? The idea is that you could have a screen, keyboard, and a small computer zippered up in a case, and could write/code outside in the sun.

Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#74

Post by dnlzro »

my_throwaway23 wrote: post #58

I've been eyeing the Xteink devices for a while now. They fit all the boxes - small, cheap, physical buttons - a basic reading utility. However, since there's no support for DRM, I'm worried either I won't be able to find books I want to read (what if I want the latest from my favourite author?), or I'll eventually run out. Might be a tiny tinsy bit of purchase-anxiety as well - it'll be my first e-ink device after a…

Liberate your e-books, my friend: https://github.com/Satsuoni/DeDRM_tools/discussions

Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#75

Post by NDlurker »

my_throwaway23 wrote: post #58

I've been eyeing the Xteink devices for a while now. They fit all the boxes - small, cheap, physical buttons - a basic reading utility. However, since there's no support for DRM, I'm worried either I won't be able to find books I want to read (what if I want the latest from my favourite author?), or I'll eventually run out. Might be a tiny tinsy bit of purchase-anxiety as well - it'll be my first e-ink device after a…

You can get free ebooks from the same place Meta got them.

Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#76

Post by NDlurker »

automathematics wrote: post #28
NDlurker wrote: post #3

I've had the X3 for a month and I love it. It's so small I forget it's in my pocket and have almost washed it a couple times. I'm working on custom firmware for it, so I ordered an X4 when they had the 20% off sale to test on there too.

link the custom firmware!

I'm a noob so I haven't got very far yet. Currently working on a bootloader then going to do flashcards and a very basic word processor. I'd like to be able to switch firmwares almost like switching applications. I'll share everything on GitHub once I'm sure it won't brick people's devices, but right now the code is just sitting on my PC.

Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#77

Post by t-3 »

koziserek wrote: post #10
miohtama wrote: post #6

For those who can afford it, I can recommend the Boox Note for the ebook reader. It comes with full Android, so you are not limited to books but can read news, Hacker News, and other doomscrolling that fills the Internet. In a pinch, you can also connect it to a Bluetooth keyboard and use it as a development terminal. SSH terminal looks gorgeous on e-ink.

the point of having an e-ink reader (at least for me and anybody I know who actively use such device), is to read things, so keeping doomscrolling options is *not* an advantage..

Android is nice because it expands the reading options somewhat with the existing app ecosystem. A browser with reader-friendly features like einkBro is something that other devices don't have, but is available easily with no cross-compiling or other tedious activities on android. Reading articles and blog posts page-by-page without the visual interrupt of scrolling is a much better experience for me. Doing everything on-device saves me from having to run various daemons and webservers and browser plugins and constantly switch between machines to keep things in sync.

Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#78

Post by aftergibson »

I would love if a device like this, combined with the zines of old would produce some really creative and interesting shortform content to get folks off smartphones.

I'm trying to think in terms of small wins more and 1 minute spent creating something dumb or doing something not on a phone is 1 less minute creepy, greedy tech bros can extract your data for profit.

Re: The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

#80

Post by aanet »

ihowlatthemoon wrote: post #45
aanet wrote: post #34

I've been eyeing the Xteink Reader but cannot decide between the X4 (4.7" diag) and X3 (3.7" diag). FWIW, the X3 requires a pogo pin cable, while the X4 requires a standard USB-C. Anybody got any recommendations? Thanks!

Go for the X4. Neither supports USB file transfer, so having USB-C charging is convenient without additional things to worry about. Bigger screen is also better if you're a fast reader. The faster you read, the more your reading speed is limited by the page turn speed.

Thanks, all for the reco.

Looking fwd to my reader soon!

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