Review: Freewrite Alpha

Four blank lines and a cursor. After getting through the setup pleasantries, that's all you're left with when you start a new draft on the Freewrite Alpha.

No spell check, no AI-powered notes on your grammar, and most certainly no other browser tabs to distract you from the ultimate goal of getting words down on the page.

Instead, Freewrite has taken its already distraction-free writing experience and shrunk the price tag some by cutting the Alpha's screen down to almost nothing.

I might not be a novelist, but between news posts and reviews, I write somewhere in the region of 20,000 words a week. So, I thought, what better way to test a writing machine than to use it exclusively for a full week, to see how it holds up to the rigors of the online journalist's grind?

Freewrite, in fairness to it, wouldn't claim that this is the ideal plan for the Alpha—it's a writer's tool, sure, but it seems fairly clearly aimed at longer-term projects, on a grander scale. We're talking novels, memoirs, manifestos.

Still, with cloud-storage syncing, I could have the Alpha immediately upload anything I write to Google Drive (or Dropbox, OneDrive, Evernote, or just its proprietary system called Postbox), so if I placed it on a desk in front of a computer monitor that I'd use to send drafts through to editors, there was nothing technically standing in my way.

So, one work week later, here I am, impressed by how the Alpha held up, but also wishing I were a novelist, since this device would so clearly suit that calling.

Writing Reformed

The Alpha is a simple plastic slab, with a small kickstand on the back that can't be adjusted, and a mechanical keyboard on the front. It has a red power button, a few function keys on that keyboard, and a four-line LCD display.

It's a word processor in the old-school 1980s sense of the word, capable of storing a large stash of drafts and syncing them over Wi-Fi when you're connected.

Moving between those drafts, changing your settings, and signing in and out can be a fiddly annoyance due to the lack of a touch interface or trackpad, but most people would find themselves doing that far more rarely than me, because, again, most people wouldn't write eight news stories on it in a day.

Once you start up a new draft, though, that blank four-line space greets you, and you'd better be ready to write. An online journalist does their research almost in the same moment as writing, in many cases—deadlines are rapid, so it can feel like you don't always have time to sit and think of your piece's structure before starting. It's a game of alt-tabbing back and forth.

Except, using the Freewrite Alpha, it's not. Instead, it's a game of reading what I need to read, digesting what I need to write about it, and then starting to type the words until it's done.

That might not sound radically different, and it isn't on a mechanical level, but the Freewrite Alpha added a layer of friction in my routine that I actually appreciated. It imposed an extra step, one that forced me to have a beginning, middle, and end ready in my head before starting a piece.

Sending Heaven

Of course, it helps that it feels great to type on. The Alpha's keyboard is excellent, with Kailh Choc V2 switches that are nice and tactile, but not so clacky as to be completely obnoxious.

The Alpha is also lightweight enough to be slipped into a bag easily. It's much lighter than my MacBook Air, albeit it also gets substantially more funny looks and unwanted questions.

While the Google Drive syncing was handy for me, the Freewrite also has a button I couldn't stop myself using—even after an automated email landed, reminding me it wasn't necessary: Send. This immediately sends your draft as a text file and PDF to the email linked to your Freewrite account, and nothing has ever felt more like ripping a sheet of paper out of a typewriter to me than hitting it at the end of a piece, that "Send" whipping it away from me.

In reality, pressing Send only beckoned the next step, an editing pass, but with this sort of product there is a lot to be said for the emotional weight of a design decision, and I fell in love with that Send button.

Still, that move through to the edit was also a step that the Alpha made more of a requirement than I'm used to. Every writer likes to imagine their copy comes out clean, and the rise of autocorrect has made that a lower bar than ever to clear.

Well, the Alpha has no crutches of that sort, so almost every draft I checked was riddled with little typos and words without spaces between them. On an actual computer, using an actual web browser, clicking through these to fix them was generally a momentary job, but it still leaves me wondering how an 80,000-word document might look when reviewed for the first time. Of course, being tentative on the space bar could well be a "me" problem, not a Freewrite Alpha one.

Just My Type

That's how I feel about most of my time using the Alpha, in fact: Many of my hesitations stem from my own predilections, not the elegant hardware I was using.

I went into this knowing I was bending the Alpha to my will to see how things went, but I came out regretting that my life isn't a nonstop writer's retreat where this thing would make perfect sense.

Because, to be clear, Alpha is just ideal for that use case, or if you actually do have a novel on the simmer. Being able to lock up your phone, close your laptop, and get this out would be a perfect way to get in that zone.

That experience is offered by all of Freewrite's writing devices, of course, but the Alpha is, crucially, its most affordable. That it also fixes the Freewrite Go's mistake of shipping without mechanical key switches is a bonus.

That said, we're talking about a $349 (£275) writing tool here. You can get a capable laptop for that price and have so much more at your fingertips.

Indeed, I'm starting to think that Freewrite's three writing options now look a little weird: The Alpha is the cheapest, and is light and convenient with mechanical switches. The Traveler, at $499, costs a chunk more for a truly portable design, but with an inferior keyboard and less room for your hands. Finally, the full-fat Smart Typewriter sits at $649, and has the best of all worlds with the bigger display, but is twice as heavy and thus doesn't make sense for frequent moving around.

What I'd really like is a middle ground—a single device that brings the bigger screen, makes navigation easier, and keeps the mechanical keyboard, but doesn't weigh a ton. Whether that ever happens (given it would probably make the existing models redundant) is anyone's guess, but I can dream.

In the meantime, the Alpha will sit for however long my loaner review unit remains with me. And every time I look at it I'll wonder why I'm not in a cabin, in a pine forest, writing something truly lasting. Send.