Xteink X4 Pro Pocket E-Reader Review (2026): Fun but Limited
Wired · LC · trust 29/100
WIRED Lightweight and compact. Fun to use. Upgrades over the X4, including a touchscreen and home button. Can magnet-attach to some smartphones. App makes it easy to send web pages and files from your phone to the device. TIRED No built-in store to access ebooks. Tiny screen means constant page turning. Learning curve for accessing and managing EPUB book files. Xteink’s micro e-readers are the smallest e-readers I've ever seen.
When I think of a pint-sized e-reader , I usually think of the popular Boox Palma , which is still the size of a smartphone. But Xteink's line of e-readers is even smaller—so small that they're designed to snap onto the back of your phone, underneath your camera. Last month, Xteink launched the Xteink X4 Pro, an upgraded version of its existing X4 that adds a touchscreen, a home button, and an updated design, making it feel more like a mini smartphone or Kindle .
But even with a fresh design, the real hurdle of Xteink's e-readers remains accessing your books. There's no built-in shop, so the easiest method I've found is to have an EPUB file handy (or the URL to a long internet essay or article) that you can quickly upload through the app.
Both the Xteink X4 Pro and the Xteink app you'll use to manage it are very easy to navigate. The biggest hurdle is that you need to BYOB—bring your own books. Not everyone is ready to manage their books as files. The Xteink also has a very small screen that will have you turning to a new page after every two or so paragraphs, but it's still a fun option if you want something super portable to read on.
Photograph: Nena Farrell Video: Nena Farrell The Xteink X4 Pro is pretty darn cute and has some solid specs for being so small. It has a 4.3-inch display with both a touchscreen and buttons for controlling the device; the buttons are silent and smooth to press. It also has a dual-tone front light, which older models don't have, letting you choose from warm or cool lighting as you read, like a Kindle Paperwhite . The display is clear and crisp, making the small letters easy to read.
The images it pulled from stories had more detail than I expected given the screen size (I could clearly see the sand lines on the rug from the photos in this story that I sent to the X4 Pro), though I would still describe the images as grainy. The letters are pretty small, but not so small that I needed the device next to my face. I could comfortably read with the X4 Pro in my lap, and the built-in front light helps maintain that true in darker rooms.
There are four font options built into the device but no ability to change the type size. If you want other fonts or sizes, you'll need to import your own through the app, or add additional software. With the default font, the X4 Pro usually fits about a paragraph and a half on each page, depending on length and spacing.
At 5.95 millimeters wide, the X4 Pro weighs only 72 grams and feels downright weightless in my hand. Its magnetic backplate is much stronger than the one on the base X4, which couldn't attach itself to my iPhone 16 Pro. (No MagSafe case is required.) The X4 Pro comes with 16 GB of storage, but you can expand it to up to 256 GB by swapping out the microSD card at the top of the device.
Photograph: Nena Farrell Overall, the X4 Pro provides a pretty intuitive experience. (The lock screen does remind you which button does what, though, if you do forget.) The addition of a home button on the bottom middle of the device harks back to the original iPhone design, and the touchscreen will be instantly familiar to anyone who's used an e-reader. It's not as responsive, though; I sometimes needed to tap a spot multiple times to switch to a different menu or adjust the brightness. By the way, you'll access the brightness menu by swiping down from the top—it's the only hidden menu on the device.
In addition to the X4 Pro's stronger magnets and new front light, there's improved battery capacity over the X4—1100 mAh to the original's 650 mAh. Xteink doesn't give specific run-time promises, however, and results seem to vary depending on how much you're reading and whether you've installed additional software.
Photograph: Nena Farrell Video: Nena Farrell All Xteink e-readers , including the X4 Pro, come with base software that's pretty easy to navigate. The X4 Pro simplifies it even more. When you open the device, you'll see the covers and headlines for the books or content you've recently opened, with a little “Recent” title hovering above it. Next to this, there's the word “All,” which you can tap to see folders called Pushed Books and Pushed Images, plus two folders in Chinese that translate to Built-In External Fonts (there are four to choose from) and Built-In Preview Books (the latter didn't work for me). Books and images you send to the device will appear in the Pushed Books and Pushed Images folders, organized by file type. Xteink devices are compatible with TXT, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, JPG, and PNG files.
The X4 Pro also syncs with URLs you can send using the Xteink app, but it will manually reformat them to be readable on the device. I uploaded a recent article I wrote to both the X4 Pro and X4, and while both did a solid job, the X4 Pro did a little better. It improved some of its translation—the base X4 replaced all apostrophes with the hexadecimal code “',” which is a pretty long addition, while the X4 Pro accurately inserted an apostrophe. The X4 Pro was also able to pull in images and label the story with the header image on its homepage instead of just the name.
You can tap the hamburger menu in the upper-right corner for a quick menu that includes books and pictures like you'd find in the All menu. There's also Cloud Sync, which lets you see what's being uploaded or was uploaded over Wi-Fi from the app; USB Drive, which turns on USB Drive mode to upload files instead of Wi-Fi; and Settings. The app is very straightforward, but you'll need to create an account and pair your device…
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