But there is just no way on this earth I could ever justify paying $600 USD for what amounts to an e-ink display strapped to a Cherry MX keyboard.
I got a Pomera DM30 instead, which just appears as a USB drive mirroring the device's filesystem. It's a Japanese keyboard layout, but the English support is fine, and overall I love it.
I could not bare needing to go through Freewrite's cloud.
Which document formats does it save to?
I'm not aware of any directly comparable non-DIY devices. There are a few other "electronic typewriter" devices that usually come up in these discussions, like the Alphasmart range and the Freewrite, but the DM30 checks more of my boxes.
> And is it actually that small that you can put it in your pocket?
I (a man who wears men's clothes with generally usable pockets) can fit it in a pocket, but not very comfortably. It has a footprint similar to a basic e-reader, but it's thicker, I'd guess an inch and change.
> Which document formats does it save to?
It just saves to plain text, which is perfect for me since I write in Markdown. The editor uses a (sort of ugly) monospace font and has some simple but useful navigation commands.
I just hope the screen is not tooo small :)