I've had my eye on Astrohaus Freewrite products for a while. The company has made all kinds of keyboard-and-screen devices that are designed to eliminate distractions and allow you to get down to just writing. But I could never quite pull the trigger and get myself away from my usual writing apps, so I never seriously considered a Freewrite keyboard. Until now, that is.
That's because at CES 2025 Astrohaus has just announced (via The Verge) the Freewrite Wordrunner, which ditches the screen in favour of a standalone keyboard so you can use it with a device and application of your choosing. Instead of the usual Freewrite e-ink display, the Wordrunner has a word counter, a timer, a red joystick, and writing-focused keys in lieu of function keys.
In other words, it seems the company's tried to make a product that brings its focus on distraction-free writing to a standalone keyboard for use with regular writing apps on PC or other devices.
CEO Adam Leeb explains (via TechCrunch): "While gamers have an entire industry creating specialized features for them, writers have been forced to rely on general-purpose keyboards and add-on software to track their work. Wordrunner transforms this relationship by making the keyboard itself an active participant in the writing process—not just a passive input device, but a true writing companion."
According to The Verge, the word counter will track your word count until you press reset, and the function key replacements are used for things such as undo, redo, skipping between paragraphs, and so on. The timer could, for instance, be used for pomodoro timing.
Because I don't like the idea of giving up my usual writing apps—Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, and Obsidian, if you're wondering—but I do like the idea of writing-focused peripherals, I was instantly roused to excitement upon seeing those little mechanical counters atop the keyboard.
But then I thought about it some more and started to wonder just how much sense it makes to port the distraction-free, writer-focused philosophy over to a standalone keyboard.
Sure, a physical timer, word counter, and media-controlling joystick might discourage me from poking around outside the inner frame of the text editor for a while. But will it stop me from getting distracted by that mental side-quest that leads me down a two-hour YouTube rabbit hole? (Will anything?)
I think I won't know how I feel about the keyboard until I get my hands on one, and not just to try out its writing-focused features. Arguably more important than that is typing sound and feel—if you're typing all day, distractions or otherwise, then you're going to want something that feels and sounds good to type on.
According to Engadget, the body is heavy aluminium, and it features sound dampening. The switches are tactile Kailh ones and unfortunately aren't hot-swappable. None of these things guarantee good typing sound and feel though. That's something that can only be decided by actually trying it out.
The Wordrunner has certainly got my interest piqued with its writing-focused additions, and if it can pull off the typing quality aspect, too, it might be the Freewrite product I've been looking for. No word on pricing yet, though, although you can reserve priority access for $1.
Or, perhaps I should just take the plunge and get the gorgeous but incredibly expensive Freewrite Smart Typewriter for *gulp* $649.
