The latest Freewrite device is a slick mechanical keyboard designed specifically for writers
Detroit-based Astrohaus has been making its “distraction-free writing tools” under the name Freewrite for about a decade. So far it’s all been like that standalone, Single-purpose devices simply intended for writing textsbut Astrohaus is launching at CES 2025. The company just announced a mechanical keyboard called the Freewrite Wordrunner, a device designed specifically for writers.
This came more than three years after Astrohaus quietly announced its intentions to build a keyboard originally known as the Maestro. But the company eventually pulled the plug on its planned 2022 launch, and I hadn’t heard anything about it since – it seems like they’ve just been working on it the whole time. CEO Adam Leeb said in a press release that the company has been working on and developing it for almost four years.
Mechanical keyboards have largely become the domain of gamers; The company wanted to build a device for people who made a living by writing instead. Without spending a lot of time on it, I can’t say if they’ve achieved that goal yet, but there are some fun ideas shown here.
The Wordrunner features a tenkeyless design that looks familiar at first glance. However, you’ll quickly notice that the function row has been replaced with a custom set of keys that make scrolling through text documents quicker. These include search and replace, undo and redo, paragraph up and down, and back, forward, and reload buttons. I’d be upset about the loss of media controls in the function row, but the Wordrunner has to deal with the bright red joystick/button. It moves in all four directions, rotates like a knob, and can also be pressed vertically to skip tracks, change the volume, or pause your music.
On the other side, you’ll find three customizable macro keys with the cute names “zap,” “pow,” and “bam.” They’re programmable for anything, but Astrohaus recommended using them to launch certain writing apps, convert text to upper and lower case, or insert the date. I don’t know what I would use them for yet, but customizable keys are an important feature for most enthusiast keyboards, so I’m happy to see them here.
The most visually striking thing about the Wordrunner is probably the two mechanical counters you see above. One of them is a timer that allows you to write sprints or just stay focused for a while. More interesting is the Wordometer dead center at the top of the keyboard. It keeps track of your words with its whopping eight-digit mechanical counter, and since it stores your word count for as long as you want, you might one day try to max it out. Of course, you can also reset or pause it at any time if you don’t want it to continue while you’re chatting with friends or sending emails.
The mechanical keys are backlit and use Kailh switches. The keycaps are replaceable, but the switches are not. It also has built-in noise cancellation, so you can use it without everyone around you hearing excessively loud key clacking (this can be a plus or a minus, depending on how you like your keyboards). As for connectivity, the Wordrunner uses Bluetooth or USB-C, and you can pair the keyboard with three different devices and quickly switch between them using dedicated hotkeys.
I had the opportunity to play with a prototype of the Wordrunner and my first impression was, “Wow, that’s heavy!” It’s a thick slab of polished aluminum that matches the surface of the premium Hemingway edition of Smart Typewriters. Adam Leeb, founder and CEO of Astrohaus, told me that the company worked to make this keyboard feel like a premium limited edition finish, even as it plans to make it part of the permanent portfolio.
Although I wasn’t able to try out the Wordrunner connected to a computer, I was still able to watch the mechanical Wordometer turn around as I started typing. It’s pretty satisfying to watch it count as I wrote an imaginary story on it, and there’s a little LED that glows green when the counter is on and red when you turn it off. The buttons and hub all felt great, and the joystick was a nice tactile experience too – I’m looking forward to using it like a volume control for media. Leeb says this keyboard is still a prototype, but it feels pretty polished and almost finished to me.
Finally, there is the ever-present question of availability. Astrohaus is launching the Wordrunner on Kickstarter, as it has done with most of its other hardware over the past 10 years. The campaign is set to launch in February with early bird pricing, but we don’t yet know what that price will be. Luckily, if you’re curious, there’s a fairly no-strings-attached way to get the best price. Astrohaus says you can make a reservation for $1 for priority access and the best possible price, and plans to ship the first keyboards before the end of the year. That’s still a long way off, but a dollar isn’t a bad investment if you’re interested.
Update, January 8, 2024, 9:27 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include some hands-on impressions and photos of the Wordrunner.
