Why we built Moov, a focused pocket e-reader

IKAWE means the act of reading. It's the starting point for Moov: a portable e-ink reader that makes room for books in everyday life, in the minutes you'd otherwise spend scrolling.

Most of us don't lack time to read so much as uninterrupted time. A commute, a queue, a lunch break or ten minutes before bed adds up to hours a week. We wanted a reader small enough that it's always with you when those minutes come.

A phone is useful because it can do so many things, and that's exactly what makes it hard to read on: every notification and feed is a tap away. Moov has a different purpose. It runs a reading firmware and nothing else: no Android, app store, browser, media player, notifications or ads.

E-ink helps too. It reflects light like paper instead of shining at you, it's easy to read in bright sun, and it only uses power when the page changes.

Moov has a 4.5-inch e-ink touchscreen in a 110 × 66 × 6 mm body that weighs 75 g, about half as much as a 6-inch Kindle or Kobo. It slips into a jacket pocket or a small bag, and it's narrower than most phones.

The back is magnetic, so Moov can ride on a MagSafe-style phone case, and two adhesive metal rings come in the box for phones and cases without magnets.

Moov has a left and a right page-turn button on its sides, plus a power button, so you can turn pages one-handed on a train or with a coffee in your other hand. The touchscreen is there for menus, choosing books and looking up words.

A warm/cool front light lights the page from its edges for reading in the dark. You can set brightness and warmth: cooler for daytime, warmer and dimmer at night.

Both models share the same body, front light, 1,100 mAh battery, buttons, magnetic back and storage: a 16 GB microSD card is included, and you can swap it for one up to 256 GB.

Moov ships with CrossPoint, an open-source reading firmware developed by an independent community for small e-ink readers. It handles EPUBs with hyphenation, footnotes, dictionaries, custom fonts and bookmarks, and over-the-air updates bring new features without a cable.

USB-C handles charging and file transfer, and the IKAWE companion phone app lets you share files to Moov. The app is for sending books; Moov itself doesn't run phone apps.

Leaving out apps and stores keeps Moov simple, but it has a trade-off: Moov reads DRM-free EPUB and TXT files (and PDFs on Moov Pro), not DRM-protected Kindle purchases or Libby loans. If you rely on those, a Kindle or Kobo is the better choice. If you read public-domain classics, DRM-free purchases or your own documents, Moov is built for you.

Read everything about IKAWE Moov, or see Moov Lite and Moov Pro.