A few months ago I lost my Kobo Libra H2O during a long trip. Apparently my brain failed me, and I left it somewhere in an airport or on a plane, and I was unable to retrieve it through any lost-and-founds.

An e-reader is a wonderful thing, so I found myself in the market for a new one. Shopping was hard, for reasons I was kind of surprised by:

Kobo has eliminated black-and-white from it’s middle of the road e-reader lineup.

If I wanted the most direct match to my lost reader, I’d be looking at the Libra Colour... but I didn’t want colour! It’s lovely in theory, but in practice it’s still not there, in my experience of looking at it in store. It’s noticeably lower contrast and at least a little less pleasant to read.

As someone who is mostly looking to read books I really had a hard time telling myself that colour would be the right choice.
I was quite interested in Boox: the idea of a full Android e-ink reader was appealing, as I would be able to read articles from my RSS feed easily, and growing skills around Android is always interesting to me. I know just enough adb to be dangerous.

Of course, then I started to think more: The whole thing I like about e-readers is that I’m not “online”. The idea of being able to install arbitrary apps on my e-reader was probably more of a a downside not an upside. Also acquiring the B&W Boox Go 7 in Canada was just complicated enough that I hemmed and hawed on it for weeks.

One reader which stood out to me, and actually was the thing I pulled the trigger on first was the XTEINK X4. A colleague showed one off when I was on a work trip, and I was quite impressed. Given how affordable it was, I figured even it it was not to be my “main” e-reader, it would be a fun thing to explore, and apparently was quite hacakable. It turns out my timing on getting this was pretty good, as they’ve discontinued that model, though a replacement does seem to be coming.

While I was waiting for my XTEINK to arrive, I was dealing with the my lost Kobo, making sure whomever found my device couldn’t buy books, when I stumbled upon a refurbished Kobo Libra 2. This was exactly what I had been looking for -- B&W Kobo, familiar form-factor. Even a small upgrade on a few dimensions. Perfect. I clicked order.

These two devices are quite different in a lot of ways, so I’m actually going to talk about the separately for now.

The Kobo Libra 2

The biggest reason I bought a Kobo, in addition to the X4, is that I like the ability to take e-books out of my local library. The integration of this is pretty darn good in a Kobo, and so I figured I’d like another Kobo.

Still, I was doing so much e-reader research, that I started coming across interesting things I’d never really seen before. For example, I learned there are open-source software options for Kobo that I’d never heard of before. The one I’ve dug most into is KOReader.

KOReader

KOreader is fascinating. It’s way more than a reader, but not quite a full firmware. When you open it, it takes over the whole Kobo, and can be used to control things like wifi, USB sharing, and more... but you can quit, and get back to the original Kobo interface.

One really appealing thing, knowing I was having the X4 en-route was that KOreader has a device-to-device progress sync, and there’s an implementation for the X4. So you can read on one device, upload your progress, then download it to another. It’s not quite the very-pleasant ambient sync capability that Kobos have, but it works on any e-pub you have, keyed by hash of the e-pub... so it works on Standard EBooks for example!

Let me get this right out of the way: KOReader doesn’t quite map right to my brain. I’ve been using it for months and I still find it a touch un-intuitive though it’s getting easier. Many people complain it’s confusing, and they’re not wrong. However, there’s some really wonderful stuff in there; For example: Kobo has this horrible problem when jumping from book to book of the text size jumping around horribly. Totally fixed in KOReader.

There’s a wonderful Calendar view of your reading which is just fascinating (though makes you notice the gaps when you’re reading things like gasp Paper Book)

There’s also some incredibly strange things in there... like a terminal emulator and an SSH server:

[root@kobo ~]# ls
bin         drivers     fs.md5sum   libexec     lost+found  proc        sbin        tmp         var
dev         etc         lib         linuxrc     mnt         root        sys         usr

I have a feeling I’ll be plumbing the depths of the KOReader for a good chunk of time.

The XTEINK X4

When I got it, I discovered right away that the default firmware is at best described as... not great. However, I had anticipated this and done my research, and heard great things about the alternative firmware: Crosspoint Reader. Flashing this was super simple: Plug in device and flash directly from Firefox.

It’s simple but effective. You load books over wifi or MicroSD card.

CrossPoint has quite a nice little WebUI when you’re connected via WiFi: You can change settings, log into your KOReader sync and more.

Reading

The experience of reading on the X4 is super nice. It’s shockingly light, very quick overall to read, and the screen is actually really good, though, I miss the front-light more than I expected -- being in perfect light just happens too rarely in reality.

There’s a built in font downloader and a good selection of fonts. There’s an anti-aliasing story, but after spending some time experimenting I came down on the side of skipping antialiasing. Partially because it looks fine without, and partially because with it enabled it means page renders are two phase: no-AA render, followed a few hundred ms after by a AA rendering pass.

Image rendering is totally serviceable a bit slow.

One thing that has surprised me extremely is how central the weight is to the experience of the X4. It barely feels like it weighs anything, and it actually makes the Kobo feel quite like a brick! Really makes me wish more gadgets chased lightness!

Battery life is extremely good. The lack of frontlight and only turning on wi-fi when syncing means it’s a real sipper.

Hackable

It’s quite neat to see all the various things people have done with the X4. If I ever got bored of it or perhaps if the battery stops charging well, I could turn it into a little Trmnl. Honestly, it’s so neat I’ve wondered about acquiring one just for hacking. I’d love to find out if it’s bootable without a battery, is converting it to a status screen without the battery is just such a lovely idea.

Some Caveats

I would mention a few things I’ve noticed:

At least on mine, the X4’s wifi modem is weak. By this, I mean that I can only connect basically when I’m in the same room as my router, where no other device cares so much.
When considering firmware selection, it does seem like it’s possible to get into a cul-de-sac: be cautious when evaluating them.
ePub rendering is very simple; which mostly means that sometimes more complicated formatting gets lost: block quotes, etc. I did also spot a few cases of ligatures hitting a fallback font.

Some Resources I Discovered on My Journey

It’s been neat looking into e-reading in 2026 with a more open mind than I have previously. I found a few neat resources to share:

Nico Verbruggen has done a really wonderful job of creating some beautiful fonts for Kobo devices. Give them a try!
For the X4, there’s a third-party app which is quite nice for using as a website clipper, called “Send to X4” which works pretty good for purpose. It makes it nice to use it to read really long articles

Conclusion

E-reading in 2026 is still pretty great, and I’m excited to see new generations of devices. Actually, Crosspoint has a whole bunch of devices that are supported now, including some very neat looking options like the LILYGO T5.