# CrossPoint Reader

60 Hacker News commenters recommended CrossPoint Reader and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0.2 years (5 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free open-source firmware that flashes easily and formats books better than stock; critics cite weak Kindle sync, no backlight and a maker lock-down attempt.

## Why people recommend it

- Better book formatting than stock (6 comments): "chucked this dudes custom firmware on it to make formatting and usability a lil bit better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253101)) "I reflows much better than stock. It also fixes the lack of space between paragraphs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48666042)) "The innovation of getting respectable book formatting running on ESP32 is remarkable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599197))
- Easy to flash (5 comments): "It’s easy to flash and an opus call away to change the behavior if you want something to work differently." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818226)) "Crosspoint took ten minutes to flash, and is head-and-shoulders above the stock FW." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703747)) "Crosspoint is very popular and very easy to flash onto the device." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664103))
- Owners say they love it (4 comments): "Overall I love the device, it's making it easy to pull up the phone and read a couple of pages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48670304)) "I recently bought an X4, put crosspoint on it, and have been loving it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48666556)) "It's great! (And I've been reading a lot more.)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48887940))
- Syncs with KOReader (3 comments): "With crosspoint, you can sync your page position with koreader on a larger form factor device." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49705009)) "kosync that comes with crosspoint and I'm working on a way to sync back to kindled too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042038)) "now seems to get stuck in discussions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48046669))

## What people warn about

- Sync doesn't work with Kindle (2 comments): "I doubt the experience is so seamless with Crosspoint, and of course the progress won't sync." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49597410)) "kosync that comes with crosspoint and I'm working on a way to sync back to kindled too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042038))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Plato e-reader software](https://hackerapproved.com/p/plato.md): 21 recommend
- [CrossInk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/crossink.md): 8 recommend
- [Freeink](https://hackerapproved.com/p/freeink.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "CrossPoint Reader", https://hackerapproved.com/p/crosspoint/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).