These Xteink E-Readers Are 20% Off for Prime Day

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Prime Day is usually a great time to buy a Kindle; obviously it behooves Amazon to make its own e-reading device look more attractive with a big discount, as buying one locks you in to years of purchasing content to put on it. But this year, I say forget the fancy Paperwhite and buy the Xteink X4, the cheap pocket-sized e-reader with a growing cult following.

The Xteink X4 (and its even smaller sibling, the Xteink X3) are produced by an upstart Chinese tech company. Released in late 2025, they have quickly gained a following among tech-savvy tinkerers for their simplicity and adaptability. Eschewing now-standard features like a touchscreen, a front light, AI integrations, and access to online stores, these little guys are back-to-basics e-reading devices, built to store your books, and nothing else. As such, they’re darn cheap, especially now that they’re discounted 20% for Prime Day: The X4 is on sale for $55 (regularly $69), and the X3 is currently $63 (down from the usual $79).

I’ve reviewed both the X4 and the X3 (which was released later; the numbers in the name actually refer to their screen sizes, measured diagonally—4.3 inches and 3.7 inches, respectively), and I love them equally. Aside from a few differences in build and button placement, they’re basically identical. They run on a super cheap chip and are lacking in both processing power and internal storage (there’s a microSD card slot instead), but they make up for it with their adaptability (you can flash them with custom firmware if you don’t like the stock OS) and extreme portability (seriously, the X3 is about the same size as a library card).

Credit: Joel Cunningham

As noted in my reviews linked above, these devices aren’t for everyone. Some might balk at their small size, or feel ill-equipped to deal with the technical hurdles involved in getting books loaded onto them (the Xteink won’t be able to access your existing Kindle library or any e-reading apps, so you’ll need to know how to source EPUB files that are free of Digital Rights Management software). But if you’ve got a tinkerer’s mindset, they are actually great fun to use, thanks in no small part to the robust online community that has arisen around them (the r/xteinkereader Reddit has more than 44,000 members, and there’s an entire website devoted to helping you load a new operating system onto your device with a single click).