This is the Freewrite Smart Typewriter, it was developed as a distraction-free electronic typewriter that stores your writing internally, and also backs it up over wifi for safety.
Modern laptop computers can be great tools for writing, but perhaps their biggest downside is the wealth of distractions they provide – all just a mouse drag and a click away. The Freewrite was designed to eliminate these distractions – providing only a simple writing interface in a retro package.
Each Freewrite Smart Typewriter comes with a matching red water-resistant hardshell case with a carry handle on top, as well as a carrying lanyard.
History Speedrun: Freewrite
Freewrite was originally launched as the Hemingwrite back in 2014, when Detroit-based designers Adam Leeb and Patrick Paul unveiled a prototype at a hardware competition. Their machine combined a mechanical keyboard with an E-Ink screen inside a retro aluminum body, offering writers a modern writing tool with the simplicity of a traditional typewriter.
Though their prototype design didn’t win, it drew widespread media attention, and a Kickstarter campaign quickly followed. Within 20 hours it had raised over $200,000, eventually securing $342,000 from more than 1,000 backers in the USA and around the world.
The company Astrohaus was established soon after to carry the concept into production. By 2016 the first commercial model, rebranded as the Freewrite Smart Typewriter, began shipping. It had local storage for more than a million pages of writing, wifi cloud syncing, and high-end Cherry MX mechanical keyboard switches.
The deliberate absence of extensive editing functions or internet access was central to its design – it was marketed as a way to preserve focus in an age of constant distraction.
Later generations of the Smart Typewriter improved battery life, expanded language support, and upgraded the display with front-lighting. In 2018 the company introduced the Traveler, a lighter clamshell version built from polycarbonate and equipped with scissor-switch keys.
The Freewrite Smart Typewriter is the company’s halo model, with classic retro design inspired by classic 1960s-era Italian typewriters.
More recent additions included the Alpha in 2024, a pared-back and more affordable mechanical model aimed at portability, and the Wordrunner in 2025, a mechanical keyboard with a built-in electromechanical word counter and sprint timer.
By 2024 the Freewrite Smart Typewriter had been added to the permanent collection of the Science Museum in London, they recognized it as an influential design combining retro form and modern function.
The Freewrite Smart Typewriter
The Freewrite Smart Typewriter is the company’s halo model, with classic retro design inspired by classic 1960s-era Italian typewriters. It has a mechanical keyboard, an E-Ink display, an aluminum casing, and battery life that’s designed to last for a month or more on a single charge.
The red version of the Smart Typewriter shown in this article is the Valentine version, but the red colorway suits the design remarkably well. Each one comes with a matching red water-resistant hardshell case with a carry handle on top, as well as a carrying lanyard.
The device can connect over USB or wifi to upload your writing when it’s time to publish, and it saves your writing locally and it can sync it over wifi to the cloud when it’s connected to a network.
At the bottom of the screen there’s a small section showing you how many words you’ve written, how many characters, and what the estimated reading time is.
It supports 60+ languages, 85+ alternative language keyboard layouts, and at the bottom of the screen there’s a small section showing you how many words you’ve written, how many characters, and what the estimated reading time is.
If you’d like to read more about the Freewrite Smart Typewriter you can visit the official store here. This red version is still in stock at the time of writing, though it’s a limited edition unit and supplies won’t last forever.
Images courtesy of Freewrite
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
