sixcolors-com-vzmwje.txt (20033B)
1 [1] Six Colors 2 [2] Six Colors 3 4 Apple, technology, and other stuff 5 6 MENU 7 8 • [3]Archive 9 • [4]Sign In 10 • [5]Membership 11 • [6]Topics 12 □ [7]WWDC 2026 13 □ [8]Help Me, Glenn! 14 □ [9]Reviews 15 □ [10]Apple Report Card 16 □ [11]E-readers 17 □ [12]Apple Photos 18 □ [13]20 Macs for 2020 19 • [14]Merch 20 • [15]About 21 □ [16]Jason Snell 22 □ [17]Dan Moren 23 □ [18]Sponsorships 24 25 • [19]Archive 26 • [20]Sign In 27 • [21]Membership 28 • [22]Topics 29 □ [23]WWDC 2026 30 □ [24]Help Me, Glenn! 31 □ [25]Reviews 32 □ [26]Apple Report Card 33 □ [27]E-readers 34 □ [28]Apple Photos 35 □ [29]20 Macs for 2020 36 • [30]Merch 37 • [31]About 38 □ [32]Jason Snell 39 □ [33]Dan Moren 40 □ [34]Sponsorships 41 42 Become a Member! 43 44 [35]Become a Six Colors member to read exclusive posts, get our weekly podcast 45 and regular newsletters, and much more! 46 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 47 48 By Dan Moren 49 50 July 22, 2026 7:00 AM PT 51 52 [36]■ Ereaders 53 54 [37]■ review 55 56 Review: Xteink X3 is the little e-reader the world’s not quite ready for 57 58 The Xteink X3 magneted onto the back of a Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro. 59 An e-reader magneted to the back of a smartphone, just as the prophecy 60 foretold. 61 62 The market for small e-readers has been booming lately. Earlier this year, 63 Jason [38]took a look at the Xteink X4, a pint-sized reading device that was 64 about as light and small as they come. But those maniacs at Xteink weren’t done 65 yet: they followed it up with the $79 X3, which is unbelievably even lighter 66 and smaller. 67 68 I wouldn’t blame you for wondering if there’s such a thing as too small and 69 light—at 3.84 inches by 2.51 inches (and just 0.2 inches thick) the X3 is still 70 larger than, say, a credit card, but not by much. The screen itself measures 71 just 3.7 inches, more than half an inch smaller than the X4’s 4.3 inch, but its 72 259 ppi resolution still makes it plenty easy to read on. 73 74 [39] 75 ^[40]1 At that size it’s little imposition to take it with you wherever you go. 76 Easy to lose? Maybe. Easy to love? Yes. 77 78 For one thing, this small size unlocks at least one capability that the X4 79 couldn’t fully deliver upon—the ability to stick to the back of your phone. 80 Like the X4, the X3 has a MagSafe-compatible magnet in its rear case and it 81 fits just about perfectly on the back of my iPhone 17 Pro, nestled below the 82 camera plateau. 83 84 However, the magnet is not particularly strong, and it lacks the secondary 85 stabilizing magnet that you see on official MagSafe accessories, meaning it 86 wobbles around a bit. I wouldn’t call it a super secure connection, but it’s 87 pretty good if you’re just slipping it in and out of a pocket. Just be aware 88 that it probably will come loose. 89 90 Like the X4 before it, the X3 features a pair of rocker switches on the front 91 for a total of four possible buttons. But they’ve opted to skip the X4’s side 92 mounted rocker switch in favor of a single buttons on each side. There’s also 93 an on/off switch at the top (plus a recessed button used for resetting the 94 device). And with all of that, they somehow managed to continue to fit a 95 microSD slot in the top. The bottom left corner also has a little set of holes 96 for a lanyard or wrist strap. 97 98 Xteink X3 and smaller Xteink X4 side by side. 99 The X3 is about the size of just the display on the X4. 100 101 The one casualty of the smaller X3, however, is the port. The X4 was big enough 102 to accommodate a USB-C connector, but the X3’s thin profile makes that 103 impossible. Instead, there’s a pogo-pin USB cable that connects to four 104 magnetic contacts on the reader. Is this a step back? Strictly speaking, yes. 105 Using a proprietary connector is a bummer in the year 2026, especially because 106 it means having to keep track of a single-use cable. That said, once you get 107 the X3 up and running, the only real need for the connector is charging, and 108 the battery on this thing lasts a very long time. (I’ve yet to run it down in 109 several weeks of usage.) Just remember to make a note of where you stow that 110 cable for the point months down the road when you do need to charge it and find 111 yourself wondering whatever happened to it. 112 113 As with the X4, the X3 lacks any sort of screen lighting, meaning that it’s 114 strictly a “read in bright light” device. But don’t worry, because Xteink has 115 already unveiled a new [41]X4 Pro with the company’s first lit screen. 116 117 [42] 118 ^[43]2 119 120 All in all, I found the X3 very comfortable to read on, whether attached to my 121 iPhone or not. The side buttons work great as page-turners, and the screen is 122 high-contrast and sharp enough to make text render very clearly. All in all, 123 it’s a great reading experience—if you take into account one major caveat. 124 125 Soft where? 126 127 The elephant in the room for the Xteink X3 is the software. Xteink ships the X3 128 with its own built-in firmware which, by all accounts, has improved since the 129 first version. But I can’t really tell you, because upon opening the box and 130 powering up the device, the first thing I did was install [44]Crosspoint, the 131 open-source community-built firmware that has turned this device from a 132 curiosity into a real contender. 133 134 [45] 135 ^[46]3 136 137 Unlike a lot of other firmware replacements, Crosspoint is super easy to 138 install; you can do it right from a web browser. While it’s not fully free of 139 technological hurdles, I’d say that most people comfortable using an e-reader 140 or updating their iPhones will be able to handle the process with few problems. 141 And the benefits are manifold. 142 143 Xteink X3 shown with Crosspoint settings screen. 144 Crosspoint is extremely configurable for all your reading needs. 145 146 Crosspoint goes beyond simply turning this into a functional device and into 147 one that is actually fun to use. It’s got a straightforward, easy to navigate 148 interface that makes it simple to do everything from reading to loading books 149 (accomplished via a web-based interface). For those who like to tweak their 150 reading setup, there are plenty of configuration options, everything from 151 screen orientation to hyphenation and, yes, custom fonts loaded via the SD 152 card. 153 154 Even the onscreen keyboard that you need to use for various configuration tasks 155 is pretty solid for what’s available—on par with navigating via an onscreen 156 keyboard with a game controller, in my opinion. I wouldn’t want to have to type 157 in my Wi-Fi password every time—and you don’t, because it saves it for you—but 158 one time was fine. 159 160 There are also a bunch of other features that might appeal to those who want to 161 take reading to the next level. For example, support for Open Publication 162 Distribution System (OPDS) standard means that if you want to host your book 163 library on your own server, you can point your reader at that and download any 164 of the books you already own directly to your device. There’s also support for 165 KOreader sync to help keep your place between supported devices. 166 167 [47] 168 ^[48]4 169 170 Crosspoint has been so successful, in fact, that the team at Xteink has 171 smartened up and started collaborating. (This after a brief moment when it 172 looked like the company might try to firmware lock its devices.) Now, not only 173 do the “developer editions” sold directly by the company continue to allow you 174 to install the custom firmware, the company has been working with the 175 Crosspoint team to make sure new devices, like the X4 Pro, will already be 176 supported when they arrive. While Xteink hasn’t quite adopted Crosspoint as the 177 default OS, it’s not far off. 178 179 The world is not enough 180 181 Given how positive I’ve been above, you might be all too tempted to run out and 182 snap up an Xteink X3 for yourself. I don’t blame you! At $79 (and often 183 discounted for less than that), it’s well positioned as an impulse buy. And 184 while I don’t want to dissuade you, I have to note the biggest caveat of all: 185 the world. 186 187 The Xteink X3 e-reader shown held in one hand. 188 Just try to tell me this wee fella isn’t charming. 189 190 If there’s one thing that’s holding back the X3 and the X4 and, frankly, all 191 the other wacky readers out there, it’s the market. The e-reader space is still 192 unquestionably dominated by Amazon purveying its razors-and-blades strategy: 193 buy the Kindle for cheap 194 195 [49] 196 ^[50]5 and the company earns it all back when you buy your books or sign up for 197 Kindle Unlimited’s all-you-can-eat plan. Kobo, who makes the hardware that I 198 prefer, is a distant second, and has some advantages, but operates on roughly a 199 similar scheme. 200 201 Both of these companies benefit from lock-in in the form of Digital Rights 202 Management. DRM is, of course, largely pushed by publishers, who insist upon 203 cryptographic schemes to lock down the books they sell in order to nominally 204 protect against piracy. Never mind the fact that books are still easily and 205 widely pirated, the DRM is relatively simple to crack 206 207 [51] 208 ^[52]6, and many of those books have been vacuumed up by the boatload by an 209 even more insidious thief in the form of AI training data. 210 211 I come at this, of course, from the perspective of both reader and writer. As a 212 writer, I certainly want to be compensated for all the hard work I put in to 213 create my books, but I also want people to read and enjoy them. That’s why 214 you’ll find no stauncher defender of libraries. 215 216 Personally, I find the industry’s insistence on DRM misplaced, just as [53]I 217 did with the music industry two decades ago. The lack of these security 218 features does not automatically turn people at large into thieves and it’s 219 insulting to think that it would. In fact, the sci-fi publisher Tor, one of the 220 biggest names in the business and a subsidiary of Big Five publisher Macmillan, 221 has put out its titles without DRM for almost fifteen years and I haven’t seen 222 any significant indication that it’s harmed their business. Many of my books 223 are also available [54]directly from my publisher without DRM, and I don’t 224 think that’s put a dent in my bottom line either. 225 226 I would love to be able to easily load any book I’ve ever purchased onto my 227 Xteink devices—or, for that matter, any e-reader or e-reading app of my choice. 228 There are, of course, [55]extensive repositories of [56]DRM-free public domain 229 books available. Amazon, to its credit, does now allow you to download DRM-free 230 copies of any book that you’ve purchased. 231 232 [57] 233 ^[58]7 I argued a few years back that this is [59]an opportunity for Apple to 234 distinguish its stagnant ebook marketplace from the competition. But for 235 first-run books, your options are currently more limited (and sometimes harder 236 to suss out). 237 238 I’d also love to somehow see support for Libby, the popular library ebook 239 borrowing app, on Xteink devices, though I don’t see that happening anytime 240 soon. But in my opinion, the bottom line is that more ways to read makes more 241 readers of books, which in turn makes more customers of books. 242 243 But I digress. 244 245 The conclusion 246 247 The other week I was riding the train with my kid, our usual weekend pastime. 248 As he was enjoying looking out the window, I was reading a book on the X3, 249 magneted to the back of my iPhone 17 Pro. As we neared a stop, a woman nearby 250 caught sight of it and marveled over it. “Is that a tiny e-reader?” 251 252 I extolled its virtues for a moment before they got off at their stop. But it 253 told me one important thing: there’s a hunger for these types of devices. 254 Because people who self-select as readers in this day and age are, above all, 255 passionate. You have to make a choice to be sitting and reading a book when you 256 could be watching TikTok or Instagram or listening to music or a podcast, all 257 of which are constantly at your fingertips. 258 259 That’s where the X3 (and the X4) deliver. A Kindle or Kobo isn’t exactly bulky, 260 but they’re not pocketable either. Being able to take your e-reader with you 261 just as we stuffed mass market paperbacks in our back pockets in days gone by 262 is freeing and fun. Now if the world might just shift a little bit more to meet 263 us, maybe we could free ourselves a little further. 264 265 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 266 267 1. Fun fact: the X3’s display is 0.2 inches larger and has almost 60 percent 268 higher pixel density than the screen on the original iPhone. [60]↩ 269 2. Did I buy one? Yeah, I did. Because apparently these guys have my number. 270 [61]↩ 271 3. I should say that there are [62]many other custom firmware projects for 272 Xteink’s hardware, but Crosspoint is indisputably the most prominent and 273 best supported. [63]↩ 274 4. If you’re not familiar with [64]KOreader, it’s an open source reading app 275 that you can install on Kindle and Kobo, as well as other platforms; one of 276 the features is its own syncing system. [65]↩ 277 5. Though, to be frank, not as cheap as it used to be. [66]↩ 278 6. Not unlike in music, the problem is that in order for someone to actually 279 to consume your music or books, they must possess the means to unlock it. 280 [67]↩ 281 7. With some caveats. For example, if you’re in a household with someone else 282 who’s purchased a DRM-free book, you can still read it on your Kindle, but 283 only they can download the DRM-free version. [68]↩ 284 285 [Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, 286 podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at 287 [69]@[email protected] or reach him by email at [email protected]. His 288 next novel, the sci-fi adventure [70]Eternity's Tomb, will be released in 289 November 2026.] 290 291 • [71]Report a typo 292 • [72]Discuss in members Discord [73](app) 293 294 If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by [74]becoming a Six 295 Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only 296 stories, and a special community. 297 298 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 299 300 Search Six Colors 301 302 [75][ ] 303 • [76]Sponsor 304 • [77]Mastodon 305 • [78]Merch 306 • [79]Report a mistake 307 • [80]RSS Feed 308 • [81]JSON Feed 309 • [82]Privacy Policy 310 311 Six Colors® is copyright © 2026 by The Incomparable Inc. 312 [83]Powered by WordPress | [84]Hosted by Pressable 313 [g] 314 315 Search results 316 317 [85][ ][86]Search 318 [87](Close search results) 319 320 No results found 321 322 Sort by: 323 [88]Relevance•[89]Newest•[90]Oldest 324 325 Filter options 326 327 [91]Close Search 328 [92]Search powered by Jetpack 329 330 References: 331 332 [1] https://sixcolors.com/ 333 [2] https://sixcolors.com/ 334 [3] https://sixcolors.com/archive/ 335 [4] https://sixcolors.com/?memberful_endpoint=auth 336 [5] https://sixcolors.com/subscribe/ 337 [6] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/# 338 [7] https://sixcolors.com/tag/wwdc-2026/ 339 [8] https://sixcolors.com/tag/help-me-glenn/ 340 [9] https://sixcolors.com/tag/review/ 341 [10] https://sixcolors.com/tag/reportcard/ 342 [11] https://sixcolors.com/tag/kindle/ 343 [12] https://sixcolors.com/tag/photosmac/ 344 [13] https://sixcolors.com/20macs 345 [14] https://cottonbureau.com/people/the-incomparable 346 [15] https://sixcolors.com/about/ 347 [16] https://sixcolors.com/jason/ 348 [17] https://sixcolors.com/dan/ 349 [18] https://sixcolors.com/sponsorship/ 350 [19] https://sixcolors.com/archive/ 351 [20] https://sixcolors.com/?memberful_endpoint=auth 352 [21] https://sixcolors.com/subscribe/ 353 [22] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/# 354 [23] https://sixcolors.com/tag/wwdc-2026/ 355 [24] https://sixcolors.com/tag/help-me-glenn/ 356 [25] https://sixcolors.com/tag/review/ 357 [26] https://sixcolors.com/tag/reportcard/ 358 [27] https://sixcolors.com/tag/kindle/ 359 [28] https://sixcolors.com/tag/photosmac/ 360 [29] https://sixcolors.com/20macs 361 [30] https://cottonbureau.com/people/the-incomparable 362 [31] https://sixcolors.com/about/ 363 [32] https://sixcolors.com/jason/ 364 [33] https://sixcolors.com/dan/ 365 [34] https://sixcolors.com/sponsorship/ 366 [35] https://sixcolors.com/subscribe/ 367 [36] https://sixcolors.com/tag/kindle/ 368 [37] https://sixcolors.com/tag/review/ 369 [38] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/01/if-the-future-of-e-readers-is-getting-weird-im-here-for-it/ 370 [40] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fn-40773-iphone 371 [41] https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x4pro 372 [43] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fn-40773-x4pro 373 [44] https://crosspointreader.com/ 374 [46] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fn-40773-firmware 375 [48] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fn-40773-koreader 376 [50] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fn-40773-cheap 377 [52] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fn-40773-crack 378 [53] https://www.macworld.com/article/183458/drm-12.html 379 [54] https://angryrobotbooks.com/ 380 [55] https://standardebooks.org/ 381 [56] https://www.gutenberg.org/ 382 [58] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fn-40773-household 383 [59] https://www.macworld.com/article/2157617/apple-ebooks-amazon-drm-libby.html 384 [60] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fnref-40773-iphone 385 [61] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fnref-40773-x4pro 386 [62] https://brickclub.pages.dev/ 387 [63] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fnref-40773-firmware 388 [64] https://koreader.rocks/ 389 [65] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fnref-40773-koreader 390 [66] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fnref-40773-cheap 391 [67] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fnref-40773-crack 392 [68] https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/#fnref-40773-household 393 [69] https://zeppelin.flights/@dmoren 394 [70] https://dmoren.com/eternitys-tomb/ 395 [71] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf0lFVDogE-JHK8iKf5q9zmVFyIwVdlHlVMC1vQ97ZQL2K6bA/viewform?usp=pp_url&entry.982800858=https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/07/review-xteink-x3-is-the-little-e-reader-the-worlds-not-quite-ready-for/ 396 [72] https://discord.com/channels/994648628247412756/1529488462808612974 397 [73] discord://discord.com/channels/994648628247412756/1529488462808612974 398 [74] https://sixcolors.com/subscribe/ 399 [76] https://sixcolors.com/sponsorship/ 400 [77] https://zeppelin.flights/@sixcolors 401 [78] https://cottonbureau.com/people/the-incomparable 402 [79] https://sixcolors.com/typos 403 [80] https://feedpress.me/sixcolors?type=xml 404 [81] https://sixcolors.com/?feed=json 405 [82] https://www.theincomparable.com/blog/posts/privacy.html 406 [83] https://wordpress.com/website-builder/?partner_domain=sixcolors.com&utm_source=Automattic&utm_medium=colophon&utm_campaign=Concierge%20Referral&utm_term=sixcolors.com 407 [84] https://pressable.com/?utm_source=Automattic&utm_medium=rpc&utm_campaign=Concierge%20Referral&utm_term=sixcolors.com 408 [92] https://jetpack.com/upgrade/search/?utm_source=poweredby