I have been trying to move away from doom scrolling, and the vice I've replaced it with is online webnovels and webcomics.

Reading from RoyalRoad or WebToons is hardly mentally stimulating, but I feel it's at least better than random tweets or vertical short form content. There are quite a few stories that I've come to really enjoy and look forward to reading when the new chapter comes out.

It's not like I've stopped reading books, but there is a lot of time between releases of a book series and each book requires quite a lot of time commitment, whereas a single web chapter require much less time to read.

Also, kinda sad but... tbh as I get older I've gotten a bit calcified in my literary habits; I'm now a bit reticent and less eager to discover new book series and have decided to stick to a few authors I'm more comfortable with (time requirement to discover if I like a new one is just too much). With web stories, just a few chapters let me know if I like the vibe, and picking/dropping stories has much less friction.

A device like the X4 would be ok for epubs downloaded from the internet, but for stuff like what I read now, due to its lack of internet connectivity [1] would mean I'd be reading LESS.

I'm not saying it SHOULD have internet... its purpose as a doomscroll-killer makes it obvious why it won't... just that these things have unintended consequences.

[1]: afaik, it has wifi but not an internet browser or app support that would allow constant linking/updating from such web sources.