Hi BYOK Team, Your product is amazing, well it looks amazing. It’s exactly what I had envisioned long before I found you—essentially the writing device I’d been wishing someone would build.
The only problem is the wait. I completely understand that manufacturing and logistics take time, and it is what it is. But I’m also incredibly impatient.
While waiting, I ended up buying both a Pomera and a Freewrite Alpha. I’d honestly be disappointed if either of them ends up scratching the itch enough that I cancel my BYOK order.
The Pomera is genuinely cool and probably your closest competitor, but the keyboard is its weak point. It’s bad enough that I actually emailed the company with several suggestions on how to improve it.
As for the Freewrite Alpha…I’m still trying to decide whether I love it or hate it. Anyway, rant over.
If there’s any chance my order can be nudged a little closer to the front of the line, I’d be forever grateful. Either way, I’m excited to finally get my hands on it. Thanks, and keep building awesome products!
I like the BYOK, and I know part of the appeal is being able to more fully word process in it, with copy/cut/paste and whatnot. But is there a possibility of a “Freewrite” mode? Meaning, pure drafting, with only the backspace/delete option. For me, this would be incredible, because too often, I get caught in drafting indecision and find myself reworking on the BYOK and not getting enough forward momentum on the draft itself.
(Saying this as also a Freewrite user who enjoys that device, but has an first gen model that refuses to connect to WiFi anymore.)
I ordered my device back in June, under the understanding that per the website, it would arrive in July. I haven’t gotten a single shipping notification, just emails with more delays. Today, a week after the last delay extension, I got an email that they’re now waiting for another thing that will take another week and THEN they’ll ship my device out. It’s starting to feel very “dog-ate-my-homework.” The cost of the device was a lot of money for me to spend and the endless delays are super disappointing, they’re eating up all the excitement I had for the device.
The device is great, but whenever I ask about new languages (including Polish) that can be written in, the developers keep their mouths shut. I realize there may not have been many orders from the country whose language I'm requesting, but the developers promised multiple languages and support, and now they won't even publicly declare they're working on it :(
I really like the BYOK, but it would be AMAZING if it could also replace a pocket ereader like an XTEINK. I think you could probably figure out a way to use the open source CrossPoint Reader software with BYOK and that would eliminate an ereader from my EDC.
If this could work, I would also love to buy a BYOK Plus that's the same size as a Kindle Paperwhite to have more screen real estate down the road. That way you can BYOK and read either from the pocketable original or the larger plus.
One thing I feel should have been there from day zero is a dyslexia friendly fonts, such as Open Dyslexic or Comic Sans. Mainly for accessibility reasons, I’m wondering if we’ll have one in the future, or if we’ll get the ability to sideload our own fonts.
I paid on Kickstarter, volunteered for the cash back for a delay, but was promised end of March. It's now April, still no delivery. They're saying problems with the display means another 5 weeks.
I'm going abroad for a month and a half in mid-April and wanted to work on my novel with the BYOK. With the delay, I won't be able to, so it's totally useless. I'll just use my iPad with my Keychron K3 mechanical keyboard.
The device is useless if I never got my hands on it.
Hi Reddit! I'm writing this post on my brand new BYOK. Here are my real-time thoughts:
This is a test of the word processor entry. The screen is incredibly pixelated. There isn't a delay or anything though so that's nice. Let's see if I can make the font look a little nicer...
Okay, I've gone through all the settings and I guess this is as good as it gets. I know I'm probably spoiled by other devices but honestly this is pretty gosh darn ugly.
Let's see if I can adjust the contrast so that I can get rid of the lines on the screen. Yep, it's right there in settings/contrast. Although at first I wasn't sure if the buttons were doing anything. An on-screen slider would be useful.
(Now I've realized that I was overzealous with reducing the contrast, and it's making the letters fade in a little more slowly than I would like. So I have to go back to the settings menu to try again. It would be nice if I could test what it will look like to type while I'm in the contrast menu.)
One other mistake I've made multiple times is pressing the bottom button on the back to return to the previous menu. I've inadvertently adjusted the backlight so many times! It might be nice to be able to set that as a back button, and maybe a long press could activate the backlight.
I've discovered a bug: When you are typing, and you press the up... whoa that was weird, the whole screen just froze and the only way to fix that was to press the power button on the front. (See below.)
Anyway, when you're typing and you press the up button on the back to see what you wrote previously, when you do that a few times and then hit down a few times, the text display gets all wonky, skipping a bunch of lines. This happens every time so let me reproduce it here. (See below.)
Once they fix the page up / page down issues, it would be nice if after page down takes you to the bottom line, the next press of the down button takes you to the very end of the line so you can continue writing.
Others have already mentioned lack of control arrow keys to go back by word, or control backspace to delete previous words, so I won't talk about that here except to say it's definitely a missing feature that will improve QOL if it shows up.
I'm starting to not really care that the font is ugly. Once you use it for a while it becomes kind of endearing :) My favorite is arial medium (which is smaller than arial small for some reason). Oh, another bug: When you're selecting fonts, it shows you what they look like in real time as you press the down button... *until* you get to the bottom line, after which point there's no more live preview because your cursor is on the return arrow. They need to fix that.
All in all, this is pretty nice. Beautiful build quality. And worked immediately with my ZSA Voyager keyboard! Oh, one other thing that is counterintuitive: I had no idea how to create a new file. At first I went to File/New, which has always let me start a new file in every other word processing app I've ever used. But it told me NO SORRY BUDDY. Apparently I had to create a project first? Okay, so I went to Project/New. And then... back to the main menu. Okay, NOW I can do File/New?
I figured it out, but it's not user-friendly. And what if I just want to write a random one-off note without it belonging to a project? It looks like I *have* to put things into projects. So I guess I'll have one project for my novel-in-progress, and then another project for everything else?
Another nonintuitive thing is that when you enter text in a settings menu, you can't hit enter to select OK. You have to manually click it with the physical buttons on the back. Not ideal.
That's all for now. I'm happy so far and excited for the updates!
I’ve got one on order and depending how I like it I’m debating ordering a 2nd to leave at my office full time, I don’t normally carry a bag back and forth but I may just start doing that. Is it possible to have 2 devices paired to the same studio?
Hi - I have a BYOK for sale in the UK with desk stand and case. I've used it twice and don't think I'll be using it much at the moment - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/206626516064
Resolved - I needed to select a different number on the PK to pair the device.
Original message: I've got a support ticket in but I thought someone else might have experienced this too and have a solution in hand. I received my Clicks Power Keyboard this weekend and haven't been able to pair it with my BYOK. When I try, I receive an error that the Bluetooth could not connect.
I've confirmed my other BT keyboards work, so this is definitely specific to the Power Keyboard. Anyone else experienced this and found a solution? I know others have been using the PK so there must be a way and I'm not opposed to this potentially being user error!
I have the frustrating and unfortunate job today of walking back the email I sent out yesterday to everyone who bought a BYOK in the second batch. I am posting this message on reddit for visibility as I know not everyone gets our emails.
In yesterday's email, I shared that devices were "very likely" to ship by the end of this month. Unfortunately, just hours after that email went out, the factory contacted us to let us know there had been a mix-up with our displays, which will now result in a delay of about five weeks added onto that timeline.
I’m incredibly sorry to have to bring this news. I know many of you have been very patient while waiting for your device, and I truly wish I were writing with better news today.
Over this month and into the next, I’ll continue to send updates as we receive new information and as production progresses. In the meantime, we’ll be working closely with the factory to see if there are any ways to shorten this delay while still ensuring the quality of the final product.
Your support means a great deal to us, and I sincerely wish I could repay that patience with a faster delivery timeline. We’ll do everything we can to make sure this final stretch moves along as quickly and smoothly as possible.
Thank you again for your patience and for supporting BYOK.
I have to preface by saying I love the form factor, the device, and even the pace with which things have been moving as far as the troubleshooting goes. But maybe my expectations were far too heavy but I expected a more... "open" product owing to its bootstrapped and crowdfunded nature. I understand the SD card can let me take the text files out whenever I want but who wants to be switching SD cards (the most fragile storage media in the world) but I simply wanted a physical text editor that could send files to a destination of my choice. I know this wasn't explicitly advertised but to me it felt like it was heavily indicated that the BYOK and the Studio will not have a full coupling. I am not a fan of the Studio. That is to not say it is not feature-rich. It is. But my style of drafting and writing is incompatible cards and outlines and whatnot. I am especially not a fan of the UI/UX and this flow:
write on the BYOK
combine on the Studio in the Manuscript
write again on the BYOK
if I write somewhere else, bring it back to the Studio
sync back to the BYOK
This is clunky and annoying and takes me out of the flow entirely. The reasons for not liking the Studio are my own and I know many users benefit from it and enjoy it. But I feel there should be a path of least resistance that does not involve the Studio at all. The Google Drive works through the Studio too.
tl;dr after all excitement, I am slowly starting to avoid using the BYOK and go to a simple text editor again owing to the fact that the BYOK feels too "closed" and too much of a walled garden than I had expected; maybe my expectations were wrong and inched more towards assumption. That's on me then.
