E-READERS

Boox is taking on Xteink with its own tiny e-reader by Stevie Bonifield

Boox’s new Tile lineup will take on Xteink’s popular e-readers that are small enough to stick on the back of an iPhone with MagSafe. As spotted by Good E-Reader, the first one is the Picco, which will feature a 3.97-inch front-lit, black-and-white e-paper display and expandable storage with an SD card slot. Boox confirmed to The Verge that the Picco is in the works, noting that it’s part of a new Tile lineup and will have an “accessible price point,” but without any other details about its plans, like specs, the specific price, or a release date.

I linked to a X3 review recently. After reading the review, I looked at and asked Claude if it would work for my use-cases. Spoiler: it won’t. So this news does not really concern me.

But I love e-readers though. I love the idea of using a e-reader to read.

I have smartened up a little now though, thanks to the two Kindles I have somewhere around the house.

Boox of course is the company that makes the Palma. It is costlier than what I’m willing to pay for a device such as this though. I was interested in Xteink because of its price.

Nobody is making the device of my dreams, for the price I want.

Review: Xteink X3 is the little e-reader the world’s not quite ready for

If there’s one thing that’s holding back the X3 and the X4 and, frankly, all the other wacky readers out there, it’s the market. The e-reader space is still unquestionably dominated by Amazon purveying its razors-and-blades strategy: buy the Kindle for cheap5 and the company earns it all back when you buy your books or sign up for Kindle Unlimited’s all-you-can-eat plan. Kobo, who makes the hardware that I prefer, is a distant second, and has some advantages, but operates on roughly a similar scheme.

What I want, is to be able to run NetNewsWire on this. Or something similar that pulls new articles from RSS feeds to it. That’s my use case, in addition to reading books.

But it’s cheap, I’m tempted to just buy it.

Boox’s new e-reader could replace your Kindle, Kobo, and digital notepad by Andrew Liszewski

Boox has announced a new version of its smallest e-reader that expands the Go 6’s functionality to now include note-taking. The new Go 6 (Gen II) sticks with a 6-inch, 300PPI E Ink screen like its predecessor but gets a bump from 2GB to 3GB of RAM and now supports Boox’s InkSense Plus stylus, which can be used for sketching, annotating documents, or making handwritten notes.

I guess I have made my peace with the fact that I can not make these e-readers (including my Kindle Paperwhite) work. I am mostly reading books borrowed from my library and that does not work with these devices.

It is mentioned as something that could come in the future, but, it is not out yet.

Anyway the places where I do my reading are -

1. Listening to audiobooks while driving
2. Listening to audiobooks while walking
3. Reading ebook on my phone while on my lunch break
4. Reading on my iPad during the weekends - perhaps a chapter or two while Savya sleeps

I don’t see a space for an e-reader here. Maybe I could replace my phone with a Palma, but what’s the point. I don’t want to carry another device.

This even smaller credit card-sized e-reader has one tragic flaw by Andrew Liszewski

I was thrilled to find the X3 fits perfectly on the back of my iPhone 16 Pro, and then once again disappointed to discover its magnets aren’t strong enough to keep it securely in place. Magnetic accessories like PopSockets or the OhSnap Snap Grip have a satisfying “thunk” when attaching them to your phone. Attaching the X3 to my 16 Pro feels more like the devices are exchanging a weak hug. They don’t remain aligned when holding the two together, and on several occasions the X3 fell off my phone while being inserted or removed from a pocket.

I want to buy a phone sized device which can help me read. The problem is what I read. Not just books. I Use RSS to read from the web. That, is the missing component in this and all the other devices like this.

But damn is it tempting.

If the future of e-readers is getting weird, I’m here for it by

If I were Xteink or any similar hardware developer, I’d be looking hard at giving support to the CrossPoint project and then focusing my efforts on making a device with simpler controls (fewer buttons!). Adding lighting and potentially a touchscreen would make this interesting, too. There are a lot of directions this sort of product could go—so let’s get to experimenting.

I was similarly looking at this device. I had seen it somewhere on threads and thought this looked cool.

But then I looked at the feature set and given that most of my reading is happening via the e-library app. It did not make sense.