The feeling is that different, and even now I can tell it’s that much better.
#Freewrite postbox pro
And I instantly realised that this keyboard is going to spoil my experience of my lovely new MacBook Pro unless I get an external Cherry MX Brown keyboard to go with it. While I was finishing off that sentence I heard the “bong” of Outlook demanding my attention on my laptop and quickly had to break to answer an email. If the company upgrades the software, I would love to see an information panel which combines word count and timer, which I think would be the most useful option of all. I don’t often need a timer, and annoyingly the timer isn’t persistent. I suspect that for me this will stay on the word count permanently. The second screen just underneath serves as an information panel, giving you useful information like a word count, a timer, or a couple of different kinds of clock. There’s a backlight for typing in dimmer conditions, or you can turn that light off and it’s perfectly readable in almost every light. As you would expect from an e-ink screen it is a little laggy, but not dramatically so. The top one, which is about the size of a small smartphone, is where your words appear as you type. The screen on the Freewrite is a pair of e-ink panels. Your hands and your typing speed will thank you. If, like me, you have typed millions of words on laptop keyboards and just got used to them, it will take a while to adjust. Once you get used to it, don’t be surprised if your typing speed goes up, but do be prepared to make many errors in the meantime. Just as importantly, like all quality keyboards (and like no laptop keyboards) this is raked at an angle, which gives your hands a more comfortable position and lets them travel across the board a little faster. Because the activation depth is relatively short, if you are coming from a normal computer keyboard it will not feel like you have to do insane finger workouts before you can actually type anything at speed. In other words, you can go relatively gently on it and be about as quiet as a mechanical keyboard can get, or you can hammer it a little harder and thunk to your heart’s content. For those relatively new to technical switches, the Brown switch is often favoured as it has a relatively short depth of travel before the key is activated, but then an extended depression which gives it a satisfying thunk if you bottom it out.
It’s mechanical and uses Cherry MX Brown switches. The power switch is a red button with a satisfying push to it.
The switches which allow you to change which folder you’re writing in and turn Wi-Fi on and off are big, mechanical beasts rather than wimpy little buttons. The base is plastic with a slightly grippy feel, which obviously ensures it firmly stays even on your expensive executive glass meeting room table, Mr Hipster Executive.Įverything about this machine is designed to look and feel analogue.
It weighs around four pounds and the case is made from some kind of metal - probably aluminium but whatever it is it’s substantial. HardwareĬompared to any computer you’re likely to use daily the Freewrite is an absolute chonk. That, in a nutshell is what Freewrite is and does. Launched in 2017 by a small company called Astrohaus, Freewrite is a combination of excellent mechanical keyboard and e-ink screen, all in a box which looks like a steampunk typewriter. So, how does this relate to the chunky little box on which I’m typing this draft? It helps at this point to describe what the Freewrite is and what it’s intended to do.
In an age when your phone goes ping and there’s an incoming message request every few seconds from one or more demanding social networks, flow is power. Flow has attained almost mystical status in the productivity and artistic communities as a kind of meditative state in which, thanks to an extreme of focus, the words just come. Like a wilderness retreat, the Freewrite is an attempt to regain some simplicity and with it that often talked of but little understood condition of flow. Going back to a normal computer keyboard and regular large screen is like emerging from a wilderness retreat. In fact, in some ways it is profoundly disconcerting. For anyone that has spent the last 20 years or so typing on ever less satisfying keyboards, writing with the Astrohaus Freewrite is a strange experience.
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