I lately reviewed reMarkable’s Paper Pure, an e-paper writing pill designed for use in enterprise conferences. The corporate markets itself as an nearly analog house to suppose, pushing in opposition to using AI and the distractions of the digital age. Consider Cuneflow, then, as a rebuke of that philosophy, as its namesake e-paper writing slate has a built-in voice recorder to transcribe and extract insights from these exact same enterprise conferences. Is {that a} large enough draw so that you can plonk down your cash when it launches on Kickstarter?
Cuneflow is an A5-sized e-paper writing pill packing an 8.2-inch 1,920 x 1,440 E Ink Carta 1000 show. Magnetically connected to the aspect is a passive, pressure-sensitive Wacom EMR stylus, full with button and eraser tip. Inside, you may discover a 2 GHz dual-core ARM SoC with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage. There is a 2,450mAh battery which is rated for 7-8 hours of steady use, and a 24-level frontlight, enabling the slate for use at any level of the day, which is vital for a tool like this.
Along with a lock display password, you should use the facility button as a fingerprint scanner for one-touch unlocking. The aluminum unibody case weighs 230 grams (8.1 oz), making it a bit of heftier than the equal Kindle. However it’s additionally bought a heavenly sturdiness that makes you’re feeling such as you’re holding an ultra-premium machine. Between that and the brown faux-leather folio, I get the sense the pill’s creators needed Cuneflow to really feel as capital-C stylish as they might.
Daniel Cooper for Engadget
On the threat of sounding uncharitable, the working system seems like somebody pointed at a reMarkable and stated “that, however let’s not get sued.” There is a sortable two-column listing of your notebooks, titled Conferences, and a separate tab on your Information. The latter is any PDF or EPUB file you want to learn on the slate, which you’ll switch over by way of the corporate’s internet consumer.
Every Assembly pocket book is, as you would possibly count on, a clean worksheet prepared to just accept your scrawls and doodles. The ceramic stylus nib is skinny and scratchy, and there isn’t any kind of substitute tip within the packaging. I used to be stunned given the inherent dangers of damage down, and {that a} nib that small might scratch the show cowl (or simply break).
As for the writing expertise, it isn’t dangerous, however you are not going to neglect you are dragging a stylus on a display. It is tremendously responsive, and I do not suppose I noticed a single occasion of lag or the show needing a refresh mid-way via writing an extended paragraph. The persistent menu bar solely has two choices: pen or highlighter, the latter of which even on its lightest setting, makes it loads tougher to learn your handwriting. If you wish to tweak the load of both, you may must delve right into a swipe-down-from-top-bezel menu, which is a bit of fussy. It is nowhere close to as polished and full an expertise as you may get utilizing a reMarkable or perhaps a Kindle Scribe.
Every pocket book additionally has a microphone image that, once you faucet it, will activate the slate’s recording mode which is able to provide a reasonably on the spot transcription of the dialog. (You will additionally have the ability to see when the slate is recording, there is a flashing purple LED beside the USB port.) As soon as over, you may want to attend a minute or two for the AI-generated insights to populate on the subsequent tab. These embody a abstract, timeline and to-do listing, in addition to loads of extra area of interest choices akin to disagreements, key questions and potential dangers.
Daniel Cooper for Engadget
To appease security-minded of us, the audio is encrypted and piped to the cloud however not saved (Cuneflow lists OpenAI and Gemini as instruments it makes use of). As soon as the phrases have appeared on the display, the precise recording of what was stated is wiped, with the AI-generated transcript all that is still. On the Perception tab, you’ll determine the place every conclusion got here from, so you may double examine if the system hallucinated. You’ll be able to edit the transcript as soon as accomplished, however you’d doubtless must do these checks whereas all the pieces’s nonetheless contemporary within the assembly individuals reminiscence.
I can see the logical argument for the strategy, nevertheless it’s one thing that will not match into everybody’s workflow. Perhaps as a result of journalism requires you to double and triple examine a quote and, if it was contentious, I might like to verify I had a recording of no matter they stated as proof. That is most likely not a priority when you’re working conferences with comparatively decrease stakes, after all.
So far as I’ve seen, the transcripts are moderately dependable, however battle with some much less widespread phrases. With so many AI-infused merchandise, you should not count on gospel fact or reliability from it — it efficiently realized I used to be saying “Phoenix Company” as soon as, however misspelled it as ‘Felix Company’ the second time.
One drawback with the Cuneflow is that there is plenty of fairly helpful instruments in right here, however there isn’t any method to make them cohere. As an example, within the AI-generated assembly insights tab, there’s a to-do listing with tickboxes for every motion merchandise. However you may’t really tick them off with the stylus or your finger, which appears a bit of foolish. And there isn’t any method to simply pull textual content from the transcript or the Insights tab and put it within the pocket book part so that you can doodle, edit or spotlight.
Daniel Cooper for Engadget
There is a related lack of joined-up pondering in Cunespace, the corporate’s internet consumer the place you may ship information to the slate. You’ll be able to have a look at your Conferences on-line, however you may’t work together with the transcripts or tick off the aforementioned to-do lists. Which suggests you are left copypasting any materials you want out of your Cunespace to no matter doc you are utilizing elsewhere.
I used to be overjoyed to study you can join a Bluetooth keyboard to the slate for ease of writing however, alas, my pleasure did not final lengthy. Sadly, you want to open a textual content field contained in the doc after which develop it, a course of which is deeply fiddly. And there isn’t any means for the field to develop to accommodate your textual content as you write extra, except you manually pull the handles wider. (To not point out there isn’t any method to reorient the show to panorama, which is lower than supreme.)
A part of this comes from being a younger firm with its first product, but additionally due to the bounds of what these gadgets can do. In spite of everything, these kinds of distraction-free paper tablets are constructed to impose typically pointless roadblocks on our actions. Very similar to with reMarkable, as soon as you have created a file on the slate, there isn’t any elegant method to pull that data out and work it within the conventional method. Consequently, I am undecided proper now if it is even attainable to hitch the bifurcated use circumstances in a means that will make sense.
Sadly, there isn’t any phrase but on how a lot Cuneflow will price — the corporate says it’s going to be “throughout the common market vary,” with early backers getting a reduction.
