I'm with you on every bit. I love my Kobo Libra 2 and it lives on my nightstand table. It's an excellent reader. The X4 with CrossPoint is an alright reader, but I've been chewing through books on my morning commute because it fits in my jacket pocket and I can have it out on the train without bumping into other people.
It's not the best reader I own, but it's the best reader I have on me at any given moment when I'm not laying in bed.
> It's not the best reader I own, but it's the best reader I have on me at any given moment
This. The form factor is almost the right one for an e-reader. The battery lasts for weeks. It is so open that you could probably write your own firmware for it based on CrossPoint or similar for your own needs.
Needs some iterative development while ruthlessly culling requests for random features.
> The form factor is almost the right one for an e-reader.
It truly is. It fits perfectly in one hand without stretching uncomfortably, so I can hold it for longer than any reading session I've had without making my hand get stiff. While holding it in the normal way, my thumb naturally rests on one of the side buttons, which I've mapped to "next page".
If I were to hold out my hand, and someone put an X4 in it, I wouldn't have to move a muscle and it'd be in the right position for me to read for hours with just the periodic button tap.
Everyone's different, of course. It's guaranteed to be too big or too small for others, and that's cool. For me it feels like someone custom designed it based on a model of my hand.
That was the big surprising win for me too, it just fits so comfortably in the hand
crosspoint has started developing a little slower now that its in a really usable state.
I've merged some working PRs onto my device and it's working great. I really needed a dictionary option because I like to quickly know the meaning of words as I read.
its fine. theres a few more things that could be nice (reading statistics for example) that other forks do have.
I also primarily use Kobo e-readers right now but I've been wanting something smaller for an EDC. I think this thread is selling me on it.
I bought it because it was comparatively dirt cheap and was hackable. I was delighted at how nice it actually was to use. I figured it'd be crappy in some ways, but, you know, at least it was cheap. To the contrary, it's perfectly fine and does a great job at letting me flip through ebooks.
What it's not good at it showing any kind of diagrams, because even if the software was decent, it's a relatively tiny screen. I haven't even bothered trying to view a PDF on it and don't know if that's supported. For epubs I've uploaded to it through Calibre, it's utterly adequate.
Does your reading position sync up between the two devices?
If you install koreader on the kobo, crosspoint on the x4 and create a free koreader sync account (or host your own sync sever): yes - but on the x4 you need to manually trigger syncs
Alternatively if you wish to stick with the stock Kobo reader app it is possible to sync via a https://grimmory.org/ instance
Not the commenter you were replying to, but I have both a Kindle and a X4. No, it does not, but searching for a unique enough phrase (just two or three words) on the current page gets you there fast enough.
As someone who also juggles multiple readers, I find it easier to have a different book per device. Otherwise I would waste too much time trying to sync between the two.
Yes. I read multiple books in parallel. Each on a different reader. So syncing is not something I usually need though I did build myself a local sync server for fun.