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Like to write away from your usual desk? Also a bit of a mechanical keyboard snob? Those two characteristics don’t mesh well. When you’re typing on the go, you generally need to use a laptop (most have mediocre keyboards) or a tablet with a wireless keyboard (not ideal). A good mechanical keyboard you can take anywhere is rare—and who’s willing to set up a full workstation in a coffee shop? The Astrohaus Freewrite ($599) looks, at a glance, like an ideal solution to that problem. It’s a writing device that uses a mechanical keyboard and a little E Ink display to let you type comfortably anywhere you go.
The Freewrite is designed to encourage focused writing, forcing you to concentrate only on what you’re typing without any distractions. That’s unlike a laptop filled with non-writing software, easy web access, and countless avenues and notifications to grab your attention. We’ve already looked at the Freewrite Traveler, Astrohaus’ even-more-portable version with a clamshell design and a flatter keyboard. The bigger Freewrite is more expensive, but its full-size mechanical keyboard and aluminum body (along with its typewriter-like profile, if you like the aesthetic) justify the premium. With that in mind, it’s very much a single-purpose device, and that can make its price seem exorbitant unless it’s exactly what you’re looking for.
A Digital Typewriter to Go
The Freewrite looks very much like an electric typewriter, except much slimmer, and with an E Ink screen where the paper carriage would be. The screen actually has two parts: a 4.8-by-2.7-inch rectangle that serves as the writing area, and a smaller 4.5-by-0.7-inch readout bar below. The latter shows status information such as the date, your associated email address, and current working folder. (More about those in a minute.)
Large, triangular, three-way switches sit on either side of the display. The left switch selects whether you’re working in folder A, B, or C, while the right switch sets Wi-Fi to On, Off, or New (the last to configure a new network). A red button sits on the top left corner of the Freewrite, controlling power and wake-up.
That’s the upper half of the top of the Freewrite. The lower half is a mechanical QWERTY keyboard with full-size keys in a 60% layout. This means a full set of letters and a row of numbers and special characters, but no number pad or special buttons. The keyboard doesn’t even have arrow keys for controlling the cursor. This is as close to a typewriter as you can get. The keys are all white, except for two red New keys where the Ctrl keys would be on a PC keyboard. These keys start new documents in the current folder.
The Freewrite’s shell consists of a black aluminum chassis on the top, framing the screens and keyboard, and a hard white plastic bottom panel with four rubber feet for keeping it in place on a desk or table. The back panel of the Freewrite features a swing-out plastic handle for carrying it like a briefcase, and a USB Type-C port for charging.
According to Astrohaus, the Freewrite can last for weeks on a charge. This seems very likely, considering how the E Ink screen (like that of an e-book reader, such as an Amazon Kindle) consumes very little power. The device is especially power-sipping if you enable Wi-Fi only when you want to sync or send your drafts (which, mind you, isn’t feasible if you’re typing on the go). That said, in two weeks of use in the course of this review, I haven’t had to recharge the Freewrite, and it’s still going strong.
Cloud Syncing and Folder Organization
Setting the right-side switch to New makes the Freewrite scan for local Wi-Fi networks, after which you can select one, enter the password, and connect. The Wi-Fi connection enables emailing your drafts to yourself, or syncing your documents online to Google Drive, Dropbox, or Evernote, all through Astrohaus’ Postbox web portal. It also lets you adjust some settings on the Freewrite with a simple web portal. Here, you can set the time zone, switch among three different text sizes, mandate a password to unlock the Freewrite, and toggle between a screensaver that shows stylized drawings of famous writers or just the Freewrite logo.
Apart from the cloud syncing and settings, you get no actively usable connected features on the Freewrite. You can’t check your email (even if you can send drafts to yourself though email) or your calendar. You can’t browse the web. Indeed, you can’t do anything on it but write. You also can’t use the cloud syncing to upload new documents, or to update documents you’re currently working on from your computer; it’s a one-way transfer only.
The left switch flips among three working folders on the Freewrite. Each folder can hold multiple drafts, but there’s no file browser for looking through different documents. Pressing both New keys at once creates a new draft file in your folder, and you can switch among your drafts by holding one of the New keys and pressing PgUp or PgDown.
The Ups and Downs of the Hardware
Typing on the Freewrite, physically speaking, feels excellent. The solid, just-heavy-enough body and mechanical keyboard really give the impression of typing on a very good, but silent, electric typewriter. The Freewrite Traveler model has a good keyboard for its size, but the difference between it and the Freewrite is the difference between a laptop keyboard and a desktop mechanical keyboard. The larger, more solid keys and their longer travel distances are much more satisfying under the fingers, and I didn’t encounter any ghosted keys or dropped letters.
E Ink screens are much slower to refresh than LCD or OLED screens, and that comes through on the Freewrite when you’re typing quickly. The display can have difficulty keeping up with typing even at a moderate clip, so sometimes you’ll only see groups of letters or words pop up as you type, rather than each letter one at a time. It’s a minor complaint when you’re typing, but it can be frustrating if you’re deleting several letters or words at a time, since the buffered backspace inputs can build up faster than the display can update. Don’t get backspace-happy, and you won’t have much of a problem.
Speaking of backspacing, that’s about all you can do to edit your draft as you type it. The Freewrite lacks any form of cursor control, or the ability to go back in your text to a precise spot to fix typos or spelling errors. You can delete words rather than letters at a time by holding New and pressing Backspace, and you do get Undo and Redo functions, but that’s it for active editing. You can page up and down through your active document to read it, but you can only type or delete at the very end of the text. Astrohaus says this is intentional, and that the Freewrite is “designed to keep you moving forward with your writing,” but it’s a significant limitation if, like me, you type fast and fix typos by the sentence or paragraph. You’ll have to do that later, on the computer side.
The Freewrite saves what you write as plain text, so you can’t set headers, make formatted lists, or even bold or italicize your text like you would with a word processor. However, the Freewrite is compatible with Markdown, a text-markup language that lets you format plain text as you type by using certain symbols and spacing patterns. It’s a little bit more effort than using keyboard shortcuts, but it’s there, and Postbox will automatically format your documents when Freewrite syncs with it. Freewrite also supports Fountain syntax for writing screenplays and automatically formatting them and exporting them as Final Draft files.
My Writing Experience
I used the Freewrite for a few weeks, and for the most part, I really enjoyed it. It’s easy to carry around and start typing anywhere, and the keyboard feels fantastic. It’s far nicer to type on than my several-years-old Samsung notebook, and unlike with the notebook keyboard, I didn’t have to deal with any dropped keys, and I triggered fewer typos.
Unfortunately, those few typos somewhat soured my otherwise strong crush on the Freewrite. I type fast and have big fingers, and I habitually go back and fix typos by the sentence as I make them. I can’t stand leaving them there to edit later when I’m aware of them at the moment, and the Freewrite’s lack of a cursor to edit text means I have to either do just that, or delete most of the sentence and type it over.
That urge to “fix it now!” and being unable to really gets in the way of how I write, feeling like a hassle I don’t have to deal with on a notebook. This is only my issue, and it is with my specific writing process. Other writers might not have a problem with it, and may more easily adapt given how they write. Indeed, keeping their writing momentum going by artificial strictures like this may well be their whole aim.
Verdict: It’s Costly to Be Single-Minded
The Freewrite succeeds at what it sets out to do: let writers comfortably and portably write anywhere they want without distractions, on an excellent mechanical keyboard and with a screen that lets the device last for weeks between charges. Your writing style may or may not mesh with that, and if you’re considering this product, you should be eyes-wide-open aware of its limitations when it comes to editing what you’ve typed. But if you prefer to plow through with drafting to get your thoughts down, then pore over your work later to edit, the Freewrite is ideal.
That $599 price is pretty hard to swallow, but the device’s build quality and unique nature help justify it to users who would find it helpful. Once again, its limited design isn’t for everyone, and most will find it far too expensive, but if you’re a serious writer and think the Freewrite would fit in with your creative process, definitely consider it. It feels fantastic to write (and only write) on.
If you don’t think the Freewrite is for you, but you still want to be able to type things on the go, we’ve tested several budget laptops priced similarly to (or well below) the Freewrite that offer much more functionality as full computers, if much inferior keyboards and battery life. Examples? Lenovo’s IdeaPad Flex 5 14 offers Ryzen power for just $30 more than the Freewrite, while the company’s Chromebook Duet provides streamlined Chromebook functionality for less than half the price.
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