In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes about removing friction and designing your environment to suit your goals. In this two-part series, I write about two small (literally) purchases that have added to my life.
In part one, I wrote about the Kodak Charmera. This is part two of two, featuring the Yizhiyin mini e-reader.
I bought a kindle back in 2017 so I did not have to bring heavy books around. Then I stopped bringing my kindle around because either my bag was already too heavy, or my bag was too small, or my kindle was in the wrong bag. Like a pebble in my shoe, this was an inconvenience I mostly kept to myself, but instead of reading during free pockets of time, I ended up mindlessly doomscrolling on my phone.
No one knows you better than e-commerce algorithms, because Taobao did something when they put this teeny, tiny e-reader on my radar.
Produced by Chinese company Yi Zhi Yin, I can only describe this millennial fever dream as a true Chinese multi-hyphenate: it is an e-ink e-reader, music player, and also has a suite of nice-to-have functions, like audio recording, an in-built alarm, English and Mandarin dictionaries, calendar, radio, and a calculator.
The e-reader came in a black rectangular box, with a silicone protective shell, pair of mp3 jack earpieces and a usb-usbc cable. I love the silicone shell – it reminds me of iPod nano cases two decades ago. I wish they provided a screen protector because I scratched the screen within the first day. The mp3 jack earpieces were generous, but they have a strange design which are a bit too funky for my liking, so I default to my airpods anyway.
Technicals
- Price
The device cost less that SGD $40 on Taobao (I paid ~$37 SGD) so my expectations were minimal. For the price, the device packs a lot of punch and overdelivered in value.
2. Size
The e-reader is about palm-sized at 51.2mm x 78.3mm x 9.5mm, with an e-ink display of 2.7 inches, and weighs just 64.3g.
3. Bluetooth connectivity
The yizhiyin e-reader has bluetooth capabilities and connects seamlessly with my AirPods. However, if you want to switch connections between the e-reader and other devices, you have to disconnect from the e-reader manually before connecting to another device. I tried to connect my AirPods to my phone and the yizhiyin e-reader repeatedly broke my connection with my phone when I did not disconnect the AirPods first.
4. File transfer
As a current Nothing phone (and ex-iPhone) user, I use a usbc-usbc cable to charge or transfer files between both the e-reader and the Kodak Charmera, and my phone quite seamlessly, dragging and dropping from Files to the external device (much like how you’d move files onto a USB). Honestly, I can’t imagine doing something like that with an iPhone so that’s something iPhone users will have to reckon with!
As an e-reader, it only reads files in txt format, which I find accessible. As the screen is notably tiny, it makes sense that you can’t access pdf or other more structured formats.
For audio, acceptable formats are mp3, wma, ape, flac, wav, aac.
5. Storage
The e-reader has an in-built 32GB storage, and a micro-sd card slot if you do run out of storage.
Performance
1. As an e-reader
It is important to acknowledge my use case for the device – I wanted something lightweight for on-the-go reading, not as a primary reading device for long sittings.
Pre-loaded books
Upon purchase, you can choose to have a clean device or preloaded with thousands of books and songs. I was curious and went with the latter, and even asked for more English books. As expected, pretty much all the books were in Mandarin, and the English books were really random texts, so I would probably skip this. The preloaded songs though (more on this below) are pretty fun to have.
Autoplay pages
While hyper-portable, the small screen size discourages prolonged reading. However, it feels like the creators really thought about the device’s limitations and tweaked its features to enhance the user experience.
With each frame displaying ~20-30 words, the device has autoscroll capabilities, where you can set the screen to flip to the next page every x seconds (I set mine to 6-7s).
Text-to-speech
There is also a read-aloud function, which is crazy to me. Unfortunately, this only works for chinese text and not english text (!). Still, really impressive that this feature exists.
Reading backlight
The device has a backlight, which is unfortunately way too bright. If you are trying to read in bed at night, it is much like staring into a beacon of light and having your corneas burned off. In bright light conditions, it works well.
Other e-reader features
You can add and manage bookmarks, select chapters, and change the font size.
Note: The device comes preset in Mandarin, but you can change this to English in the settings once you receive the device. If Mandarin is not your mother tongue, you can reach out to customer support for help.
2. As a music player
The device also being a music player was a nice perk. The device works really well as an mp3 player and I plan to use it often. I am looking to simplify as part of my new year resolutions (more on this another time perhaps), so in a big leap, I cancelled my Spotify subscription. How will I ever live without my Discover Weekly? Well, we will see. Wish me luck!
Preloaded songs
The device came with thousands of music files, ranging from english and mandarin to even korean songs, with a hard tilt towards mandarin songs. The songs feel quite karaoke-core, so I would still recommend you load your own songs, but this provides a nice starting point.
Play songs aloud
If you are not plugged into a pair of earpieces, this mighty little device also plays music out loud! Sound quality is decent.
Search function
A drawback of the user experience is the search function. If you are looking for a specific song, you’d have to type it in the search bar and wait for it to pop up. The search function takes a bit more time than what we are used to in this day and age, but I can live with it.
Bonus: Customer support
The customer support for this device has been impeccable. They accommodated my request to include more English texts and songs and promptly answered my questions on how to access certain features post-purchase.
Where to buy
I bought (and wrote about) the Kodak Charmera and now the Yizhiyin e-reader very intentionally. These are small purchases (both items cost me less than SGD $100 total) that move me towards things I want to do – to engage more deeply with life, capture moments with more pause, and to read earnestly. And I tested them out and liked them enough to write about them.
I do not encourage mindless buying, but if these products add alignment to your life like they do mine (so far), you can click to purchase the Yizhiyin e-reader and the Kodak Charmera on Taobao.
I am on day 3 of my social media cleanse (another NYR) so I hope to write more long-form content here or offline. Till next time! x
