Astrohaus has just announced a brand new digital typewriter that is distraction free and is one of their most compact. Interestingly, the device abandons the company’s favored E Ink technology for a “reflective monochromatic FTSN LCD” However, this should not affect its battery life, the Freewrite Alpha is supposed to get up to 100 hours on its rechargeable 4,200 mAh battery. It’s also rechargeable over USB-C when the battery runs out.
There is a single screen on the Alpha, previous Freewrites had two. You should easily fit 6 lines @15pt, 4 lines @26pt. You can type on the mechanical keyboard via Kailh chocV2 low profile switches and the keycaps are MX compatible stems. The viewing angle should be excellent with 15 degrees w/ kickstand. There is no word of internal storage, although it will fit 1 million pages right on the device. It has WIFI, and documents can be sent via cloud services with Evernote, Dropbox or Google Drive.
The TrAlph is billed as a distraction free experience. You can’t check your email, factcheck on Wikipedia, access social media or launch any apps. It is really a singular purpose device, a writing tool, to write a novel or a short story. Using the Alpha is pretty simple, you just start typing. If you don’t speak English, no worries. There are keyboard layouts for German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, Chinese, Japanese. See a list of keyboard layouts here.
Currently, you can reserve the Freewrite Alpha for $1 ahead of its launch on a crowdfunding campaign. Astrohaus plans on selling the device for $349, which will make it the cheapest option in the company’s lineup. I think this might be a very good choice for writerrs or authors that want to write while at a café or on vacation. It is great to not be distracted while in the zone. The price is also pretty good, this is because its not using an E INK screen. If you want an glare free experience, you can still purchase the Freewrite Traveler for $699.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
