I had some negative things to say about Freewrite in my original review from a couple of posts back.
I take it all back.
I had some problems, sure. It turns out that the machine can be a bit picky about which kinds of USB chargers will work, and which won’t. As it happens it didn’t like any of the ones I had, and then there’s the bit where I bought a charger that should have worked but it didn’t, and it was my own damned fault for not reading the instructions. As long as the charger is a generic one, not built specifically for one device, it should work.
Long story short: I couldn’t get the battery to charge; I sent the machine back; Astrohaus couldn’t find anything wrong with it, and they expressed it back to me. I got it back on Monday. It’s now Friday so I’ve had several days to play with it.
And I love it. I can use it on a desk, on my knees lying on the bed, or sitting in a chair in the living room. I don’t think I’d have any problems using it on a train or a plane. The screen may be small but I can see the text just fine, backlight or no. (The text size can be changed; there are only three options – small, medium, and large – but I’d say those are enough.) The keyboard feel is really good. It’s a joy to work with.
In my earlier review I said I wasn’t sure if I would get used to not being able to go back to fix typos (beyond being able to backspace). It turns out that after a little while I was able to forget those typos and just keep banging keys. And that on its own more than doubled my hourly word count.
Another thing I had reservations about was Astrohaus’ support and the fact that they’re not around at weekends. It turns out they’re a small concern and don’t have the manpower for 24/7 support. But when they are on the clock, they get busy. They’ve been more responsive to emails than several much larger businesses I could name. And as I said, they didn’t hang about looking at my machine and then getting it back to me. I’m not worried about support any more.
So forget the negatives in that first review. I no longer have anything bad to say about it, and I’d recommend it to anyone.
One last thing: I mentioned earlier that you can get a 5% discount by using this link:
(And I get a kickback for the referral, too.)
Until next time…
Pete Ford 
I’m having the same issues with the battery. For the price of one of these I think they would have been better off supplying a charger with the cord. I fortunately had a USB multimeter and experimented with a hub. I’m curious how big the battery actually is in mAh. This multimeter keeps track so we will see when the battery is full!
I’m sorry, I didn’t get a notification and only just saw this. So: the problem with mine charging was to do with a lower than usual voltage on the power rail, so the charging electronics weren’t cutting in when I plugged in. Astrohaus fixed it and got it back to me. They also said to use a USB charger that provides about 1A of current, rather than a higher-current one (some can deliver anything from 2.1A to 2.4A – they said I shouldn’t use one of those, I think because maybe the higher current reduces the battery life). Also, just a generic charger is ok – you shouldn’t use an Apple charger because they often have non-standard connectors. I found a cheap charger at Walgreens that works just fine.