What if your reading device was smaller than a deck of cards? Not a phone with a reading app. Not a full-size Kindle. Something genuinely small enough to forget about until you need it. That is the promise of the new wave of pocket-sized e-ink readers, and in 2026, there are more options than most people realise.

The Xteink X4 sparked a lot of conversation this year. A £40 device small enough to stick to the back of a phone, with a crisp display and a surprisingly active custom firmware community. But it is far from the only option in this category. Whether you want something polished out of the box, something hackable, or something that syncs seamlessly with your existing library, there is a device worth considering.

Here are five compact e-ink readers that deserve your attention, along with honest comparisons of what makes each one worth (or not worth) your money.

1. Xteink X4: The Hacker's Favourite Budget Reader

The X4 is the device that kicked off this whole conversation. At around £40 from AliExpress, it ships with a 16GB microSD card, a card reader, and an adhesive metal ring for MagSafe mounting. The stock firmware is minimal: three fonts, basic spacing controls, and EPUB support. Page turns are instant with no noticeable ghosting.

The real story is the custom firmware ecosystem. CrossPoint is the base project, now at v1.3.0 with over-the-air updates, 24 UI languages, and SD-card font installation. Flashing takes about two minutes and one terminal command. For anyone put off by the terminal, CrossPoint also offers a browser-based flasher.

From CrossPoint, two firmwares stand out. Papyrix focuses purely on the reading experience, with a Knuth-Plass line-breaking algorithm for TeX-quality justified text, six-language hyphenation, and support for Arabic and Thai scripts. Inx goes broader, adding per-book settings, OPDS catalogue browsing, reading statistics, and Calibre wireless sync.

The X4 is not perfect. The microSD slot needs a stylus to eject. The MagSafe mount polarity is inverted on third-party cases. The stock OS defaults to Chinese. But for developers and tinkerers who want a cheap, hackable reader they can carry everywhere, it punches well above its price. Think of it as the Raspberry Pi of e-ink readers: raw hardware made interesting by community software.

2. Kobo Libra Colour: The Polished All-Rounder

If you want something that just works without any flashing or configuration, the Kobo Libra Colour is the obvious counterpoint. It is not pocket-sized in the same aggressive sense as the X4, but it is light and slim enough to slip into a jacket pocket without thinking about it.

The colour e-ink display is the headline feature. It handles comic books and illustrated non-fiction in a way that monochrome devices simply cannot. Text rendering is excellent out of the box, with proper font management, margin controls, and line-spacing adjustments that most readers will never need to touch.

3. PocketBook Verse Pro: The Format Agnostic Option

Most e-ink readers handle EPUB well. Fewer handle everything else without complaint. The PocketBook Verse Pro supports an unusually wide range of formats natively, including PDF, DJVU, CBR, CBZ, FB2, and plain text, without needing Calibre to convert anything first.

Five compact e-ink readers laid out side by side on a wooden desk

This matters more than people expect. Technical readers who keep PDF documentation on their devices will appreciate not having to pre-process every file. The Verse Pro handles two-column PDF layouts better than most devices in this price range, which is genuinely rare.

The device also supports Dropbox and PocketBook Cloud sync, so your reading position stays consistent across devices. Battery life is strong, and the physical buttons are well-placed for one-handed reading. It sits in the £130 range, which makes it a reasonable middle ground between the budget X4 and the premium Kobo.

One honest caveat: PocketBook's firmware update cadence is slower than Kobo's, and the UI feels a generation behind. It is a device that prioritises format support and build quality over software elegance. For PDF-heavy readers, that is absolutely the right trade. For everyone else, it might feel slightly dated.

4. reMarkable Paper Pro: When You Need More Than Reading

Is a reading-only device always the right choice? The reMarkable Paper Pro argues otherwise. It is larger than the other devices on this list, closer to A5 in size, but the combination of e-ink display and stylus input opens up use cases that a pure reader cannot touch.

Annotating technical documentation directly on the page is the killer feature. Developers who read through Apple developer docs or API references will appreciate being able to highlight, annotate, and sketch diagrams alongside text. The writing latency on the Paper Pro is low enough to feel natural, which earlier reMarkable devices could not claim.

The device syncs annotations to the cloud and exports them as marked-up PDFs, which is useful for team workflows. Pair it with a quality writing instrument at your desk and the whole setup feels considered rather than cobbled together.

The price is steep, sitting above £500 with the stylus. The subscription model for cloud sync adds a recurring cost. But for professionals who need a distraction-free reading and annotation device, nothing else in the e-ink space comes close to the experience it offers.

5. Supernote Nomad: The Note-Taker's Alternative

The Supernote Nomad occupies a similar space to the reMarkable but with a different philosophy. Where reMarkable leans into minimalism, Supernote leans into flexibility. The open file system means you can side-load fonts, templates, and documents without any official tool or workaround.

PocketBook Verse Pro displaying a PDF document with two-column layout

The Nomad's handwriting recognition is strong, and it converts handwritten notes to text reliably across multiple languages. For developers who sketch architecture diagrams or take meeting notes by hand, the ability to search handwritten content is genuinely useful rather than just a marketing bullet point.

Key Features of E-Ink Readers

✓

Budget-Friendly
Starting at £40 for Xteink X4

✓

Customizable
Active firmware community for modifications

✓

Distraction-Free
Focus solely on reading experience

✓

Portable Size
Fits easily in your pocket

✓

Supports EPUB
Compatible with various ebook formats

Battery life on the Nomad is exceptional. Weeks of regular use on a single charge is realistic, not aspirational. The device is also repairable, with a removable battery and user-accessible internals that most consumer electronics deliberately avoid. That is a meaningful differentiator for anyone who thinks about long-term ownership.

At around £350, it lands between the Verse Pro and the reMarkable. The community around Supernote is smaller than Kobo or reMarkable, but the official forums are active and the developers engage directly with user feedback. For note-heavy workflows, it deserves serious consideration alongside the more widely reviewed options.

What Actually Matters When Choosing a Compact Reader

Here is the thing: every device on this list does something well. The question is which trade-offs you can live with. A few things worth thinking through before you buy:

Format support matters more than specs. If your library is 80% EPUB, almost any device will serve you well. If you read PDFs, technical docs, or comics regularly, format support should be your first filter.
Firmware flexibility has a real cost. Devices like the X4 reward tinkerers. Devices like the Kobo reward people who want to read, not configure. Know which you are before spending money.
Sync is underrated. The ability to pick up on one device where you left off on another sounds like a minor convenience. After a week of using it, going back to manual management feels genuinely annoying.
Screen size is not everything. Smaller screens force better typography decisions. Many readers find a 4-inch display more comfortable for sustained reading than a 7-inch tablet with a reading app.
Battery life compounds over time. A device you never have to think about charging becomes invisible in the best possible way.

Typography quality is also worth paying attention to. If a device renders fonts well and handles justification properly, reading feels effortless. If it does not, you will notice on every page. A free font pairing tool can help you think through which typeface combinations work well for extended reading before you commit to loading custom fonts onto a device.

For developers building reading apps or custom firmware, understanding how font rendering decisions affect readability is essential. Check out resources on CSS font properties for a solid technical foundation on how font rendering works at the browser and system level.

A Note on Custom Firmware and Open Source

The X4's firmware ecosystem is genuinely impressive for a device at this price. The fact that a small community built Knuth-Plass line-breaking and Arabic script support into a £40 device says a lot about what motivated open-source contributors can accomplish. If you want to explore the code behind CrossPoint or contribute, the GitHub repository is the starting point.

For developers curious about building their own reading interfaces or tools, the EPUB development community on Stack Overflow is a useful resource for understanding the format's quirks at an implementation level.

Sharing Your Library and Managing Files

Most of these devices work well with Calibre for library management, format conversion, and wireless syncing. If you are building a digital reading setup from scratch, Calibre is the free tool that ties everything together regardless of which device you choose.

Want to share a specific book recommendation or library catalogue with someone quickly? A free QR code generator lets you encode an OPDS feed URL or a direct download link into a scannable code. It is a small but genuinely useful trick for book clubs or shared reading groups.

If you create reading guides, book reviews, or visual reading logs, keeping your image files lean matters for web performance. Run screenshots and cover images through a free image compressor before uploading them to keep page load times fast. Similarly, if you record video walkthroughs of device setups or firmware flashing processes, a free video compressor will cut file sizes dramatically before you share them.

For reading logs or book tracking dashboards built with Python, Plotly is a straightforward library for visualising reading statistics in a way that mirrors the kind of stats page that firmware like Inx provides natively on the device itself.

The Honest Verdict

If you want the cheapest entry point into this category and you enjoy tinkering, the Xteink X4 with custom firmware is genuinely remarkable value. The community behind CrossPoint, Papyrix, and Inx has turned a minimal device into something that competes with readers costing three times as much.

If you want something that works perfectly on day one without any configuration, the Kobo Libra Colour is the obvious recommendation. It costs more but earns that premium through software polish and ecosystem support.

For PDF-heavy readers, the PocketBook Verse Pro handles formats that other devices struggle with. For annotation and note-taking workflows, the reMarkable Paper Pro and Supernote Nomad both make strong cases, depending on whether you prioritise minimalism or flexibility.

What kind of reader are you? That question matters more than any spec sheet. Try one of these devices for a month and the answer will become obvious quickly. Want to explore the typography side of e-ink reading further? Check out the font pairing tool to start thinking about typeface choices before you load anything onto a new device. And if you build visual content around your reading setup, the image to GIF converter is a fun way to create animated previews of device interfaces or page-turn animations for reviews and social posts.

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