Xteink X4 Pro Review: Buy It for the Light, or Get the X3

The Xteink X4 Pro is the first pocket Xteink you can read in the dark. At $99 (list $109) that’s Kindle money. Buy the X4 Pro for the front light, or skip it. The light comes with pogo-pin charging instead of USB-C, a touchscreen you can lock, and stock XTOS that dims the light mid-page. PocketInk is independent, not affiliated with Xteink; every claim links to its source. The original X4 is discontinued. The X3 is the $69 button-only model still on sale. The X4 Pro is a live SKU that sells out in waves, so check the product page before you order. Confirmed specs and launch notes live in X4 Pro: what’s confirmed. Already own a base X4? Use upgrade, stick, or skip. Short on time? Jump to the verdict or availability.

Should You Buy the Xteink X4 Pro?

Buy the X4 Pro if you read in the dark and want a pocket reader that replaces your phone. Buy the $69 X3 if you read in daylight. The original X4 is discontinued. Buy neither if you need Libby, Kindle purchases, or a big screen. Tech Tactician: “For night reading, yes… For daylight reading, I still prefer the logic of the regular X4.” Stark Insider is blunter: “If you already read on your phone and wish you did not, yes. If you want one device to handle all of your reading, no, buy a Kindle or Kobo.” Lifehacker calls the X4 Pro “almost perfect (for the right user)” but no longer cheap enough for the merely curious. The payoff, per TechCrunch’s three-week review: the light and touchscreen make the X4 Pro “more viable as a device that you can use as your main e-reader” rather than a Kindle companion.

What Does $99 Buy?

The X4 Pro adds a dual-tone front light, a touchscreen, a 1,100 mAh battery (up from the discontinued X4’s 650 mAh), and a bigger chip. You give up the USB-C port and the bottom button row. Full launch specs are in X4 Pro: what’s confirmed.

Every row comes from the X4 Pro and X4 product pages except the chips. Xteink does not publish those; the Free-Ink SDK identifies them.

If any single row is a dealbreaker (no USB-C, EPUB/TXT only, black only), stop here and take the X3 tile.

The Front Light Is the Whole Reason to Buy

The X4 Pro’s dual-tone front light works: it finally makes a pocket Xteink readable in bed. Lifehacker rates it plainly: “not as bright or as customizable as the light on a Kindle Paperwhite, but it’s not bad at all.”

Two problems sit under that praise. First, the brightness floor. TechCrunch read before bed on the dimmest setting, “which is still a bit brighter than I’d like for bedtime reading.” The pixel leaves review (74,518 views) reports the same from a shared bedroom: “I sleep next to someone in a nearly pitch black room and I find this too bright for that specific bedtime reading context. I wish it could go a few steps dimmer and maybe warmer.”

Second, a stock-firmware timeout. On August 10, two new owners posted the same complaint hours apart: one reports “the front light seems to turn itself off” between page turns; another asks “Is there a way with the stock firmware to increase the backlight timeout?” A partial fix is coming: pixel leaves’ pinned update notes the CrossPoint X4 Pro beta already gets “slightly lower minimum brightness than Xteink stock firmware.”

Pogo-Pin Charging: The Trade-Off That Fills Every Comment Section

The X4 Pro has no USB-C port. It charges only through a magnetic pogo-pin adapter that comes in the box with no cable; Xteink’s own product FAQ answers “Does the X4 Pro include a charging cable? No.” Lose the adapter and, as Stark Insider puts it, “you cannot charge the device at all… Spares are inexpensive. Buy two and leave one in the car.” Lifehacker adds that the magnet is weak: “more than once I set it down to charge and didn’t realize it had become detached.”

Commenters are blunter. Under Kit Betts-Masters’ review, one compressed it to “x4 pro minus usb-c equals x4 trashcan.” Another called the missing USB-C port a dealbreaker. Even TechCrunch concedes that “if you’re really passionate about the universality of USB-C, this could be a dealbreaker.” Existing X4 owners weighing that trade: use the sibling guide.

The Touchscreen Nobody Asked For (You Can Turn It Off)

The X4 Pro adds a touch layer owners didn’t want. You can ignore it: Lifehacker confirms “you can lock the touchscreen while reading if you don’t want to use it.” Don’t expect much from the layer you’re locking; the same review calls touch “a little clunky at times.”

The top comment under the pixel leaves review, at 380 likes:

“They should [have] just kept everything the same, USB-C, No Touch Screen, and just added a backlight to make it a pro model.”

The touch layer also has an optical cost. Lifehacker’s biggest knock on the X4 Pro: “the screen isn’t as crisp as the ones on the X3 and X4,” because the added front-light and touch layers set the text back from the surface. The eBook Reader predicted exactly that on launch day. Button readers: lock touch on day one and accept a slightly less crisp panel as the price of the light.

Stock Software (XTOS): What Your First Weeks Actually Feel Like

Out of the box the X4 Pro runs XTOS, Xteink’s own non-Android firmware, and the format list is short: EPUB and TXT, JPG/BMP images, BIN/XTF fonts, TTF promised “in a future update.” No DRM, so no Libby and no Kindle purchases. Lifehacker: the X4 Pro “can really only render EPUB and TXT”; MOBI and PDF go through the companion app’s cloud conversion.

Weak stock software is the oldest complaint about this brand. The top comment on a 445-point r/eink thread: “the biggest annoyance for me with Xte ink devices is the software.” The eBook Reader was harsher on launch day: “from my experience with the X3 and X4 the stock software is so buggy it’s basically unusable,” and they “wouldn’t bet on” the new touch UI being good out of the gate. Three weeks in, the concrete X4 Pro examples are the August 10 front-light timeout threads above. Budget for a rough first firmware month, sideload DRM-free EPUBs, and read the next section before assuming a rescue.

CrossPoint on the X4 Pro: Beta Only (as of August 2026)

CrossPoint, the community firmware most owners flash, does not stably support the X4 Pro yet. The CrossPoint v1.5.0 release notes (August 7, 2026) say the X4 Pro “isn’t supported in this build yet” and that “a beta is up on the site for testers.”

The beta was a 633-upvote, 159-comment event: “If you were on the fence about buying the Pro due to CrossPoint not being available before, you can fear no more.” Treat it as a beta anyway. Open X4 Pro issues as of August 10 include #2857 “Big Battery Drain on X4 Pro whilst device is asleep” and #2823 “No Screen refresh on X4 Pro”. No other firmware supports the Pro at all; Papyrix targets the X4 and X3. Xteink’s Unrestricted Firmware Guarantee exempts units bought direct from xteink.com from firmware restrictions; our firmware hub tracks the flashing path.

Status as of August 10, 2026: stock XTOS is what you live on; CrossPoint’s X4 Pro build is a fast-moving tester beta. Buy the X4 Pro for its hardware, not for CrossPoint-today. If firmware is your whole reason, wait for stable support.

X4 Pro Battery Life, Three Weeks Later

The X4 Pro’s 1,100 mAh cell absorbs the front light’s draw. TechCrunch: “I’ve been using my device most days for about three weeks, and I’m only down to 60% battery.” pixel leaves measured about 10 hours of reading on stock firmware with the light on its lowest throughout, noting the bigger battery “helps offset how much more of it the front light uses up.” Xteink publishes no runtime figure; “long-lasting battery life” is the entire official claim.

Keep the light low and stay off beta firmware for those numbers. If the battery craters overnight, suspect firmware before hardware.

Can You Actually Buy One?

The X4 Pro is a live SKU again as of August 24, 2026. Stock still moves in waves, so check the product page before you plan around one. There is one variant (Space Black) and one official store. One owner:

“I saw it finally in stock, decided I will order it after taking a shower. 15m later. OUT OF STOCK.”

X4 Pro, X3, or Wait?

On price, a launch-week thread put $99 as “literally into Kindle territory,” and Lifehacker makes the same point: “you can get a standard Kindle for just $10 more.” Both are right on price. They miss what the X4 Pro is for: physical buttons, a jeans-pocket body, and no store, ads, or ecosystem. If Kindle-per-dollar is your metric, buy the Kindle. Some launch-week shoppers bought down: “Just bought the og X4 because of all these unnecessary changes.” Wait only if you need stable CrossPoint or a color other than black.

Already own an X4? Your decision is upgrade, stick, or skip, not this one. Need Libby or your Kindle library? No Xteink fits; watch the Android-based S4 instead. Whatever you pick, don’t buy a $99 X4 Pro to leave the light off.

Quick Answers Before You Buy (FAQ)

Check X4 Pro stock · $99 at xteink.com or get the X3 at $69 today. The original X4 is discontinued.

Sources

• “The Xteink X4 Pro could be the tiny e-reader of your dreams”: Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch, July 21, 2026
• “Xteink X4 Pro Review: I Didn’t Think I Could Love a Pocket-Sized E-Reader More”: Joel Cunningham, Lifehacker, July 2026
• “The XTEINK X4 Pro Is the Kindle Successor Amazon Never Made”: Clinton Stark, Stark Insider, July 21, 2026 (analysis; author owns the base X4)
• “Xteink X4 vs. X4 Pro – Is The Frontlight Worth It?”: Tom Smigla, Tech Tactician, updated July 30, 2026
• “New XTEINK X4 Pro Released with Touchscreen and Frontlight”: Nathan Groezinger, The eBook Reader, July 21, 2026
• CrossPoint v1.5.0 release notes: GitHub, August 7, 2026
• CrossPoint issue #2857 (X4 Pro sleep battery drain) and #2823 (no screen refresh): GitHub, August 2026
• Free-Ink SDK README: X4 Pro hardware identification (ESP32-S3, panel, touch controller)
• Papyrix reader: supported devices (X4/X3, no X4 Pro)