Remember the Hemingwrite, a digital typewriter that was crowdfunding a couple of years ago? Turns out, it actually came off the production line this year in the form of the Freewrite, a dedicated word-processing device designed for portable use.
Like many modern devices, it has a screen and a keyboard for typing on that screen. Unlike them, it’s designed to be used strictly for writing. That means, it runs a basic word processing software and nothing else, making for a device that’s completely free of any distractions.
Freewrite consists of a mechanical keyboard with an e-paper screen above it and a couple of controls. That’s it. To use, just switch it on and start typing, with everything you write immediately appearing on the paper-like display. It comes with the most barebones word processing software on it. How barebones? Forget copy-paste, it doesn’t even have directional buttons, so you can’t return to edit items, leaving you with the option to either leave the errors intact or delete the whole thing to start over. Really. The idea is to use it as a device for writing drafts uninterrupted, which you can later edit on your regular writing software on the computer.
It comes with onboard storage large enough to save around a million pages, with integrated Wi-Fi activated using a dedicated lever that immediately sends what you’ve written to your email inbox. It can alternatively save documents to Dropbox, Google Drive, or Evernote.
Available now, Freewrite is priced at $499.