Earlier this year I purchased a Pomera after agonizing over it for a while. It was difficult to justify spending money on a device that only does one thing. It was especially difficult to justify it when I was ordering it from a computer that was manifestly capable of allowing me to write something.
I ordered it anyway.
Some Background
I will readily admit that the computer I was using was essentially a distraction machine. Attention is a valuable resource, apparently, because everyone seems to be clamoring for it. It’s easy to have a moment where your focus drifts and you are able to execute on some whim that isn’t directly related to what you’re trying to do.
A prior experiment of mine was to crank out drafts on a mechanical typewriter. I had some great takeaways from that experiment but there are two most relevant to the Pomera. First, it is significantly harder to be distracted if the device you’re using doesn’t facilitate distraction. Second, the experience of a device changes how you think and interact with it.
Also, I thought the Pomera would be a lot of fun. It’s a simple motivation but “technology is fun, sometimes” is worth stating.
Anyway, it arrived in the middle of spring 2025 and I spent a bunch of time using it. Now I have some thoughts.
The Device
The Pomera is smaller than any tablet or laptop I’ve encountered. It’s about as long as two cell phones laid end-to-end, about as wide as two of them side-by-side, and about as thick as two stacked on each other when folded shut. That’s very approximate but it should give you an idea as to what kind of footprint you’d be dealing with.
The weight is negligible unless you’re a kitten or something. It’s enough to feel solid without being a hefty little beast. Again, I would suggest roughly doubling the weight of your cell phone to get an approximate idea. Convenient!
Despite its weight class, it feels solidly built. I wouldn’t use it as a doorstop, but I don’t have any feelings like I’m going to twist the hinges on the thing when I open it up to write. The keyboard has some quirks that I’ll get into later, but I don’t feel like I’m abusing it when I type.
The screen is a screen: you can see stuff on it and adjust brightness. I don’t know what else you’d want. If pressed, I’d maybe say “make it a bit bigger” but you’d have to press on me really hard because I am generally satisfied with those dimensions as well.
The finish is some matte black plastic and it shows fingerprints about as well as a glossy case would. I don’t care much about that because it’ll either get printed up over time with serious use and look fine or I’ll put a bunch of stuff on it. Honestly that’s pretty low on my list of concerns.
A strong point in its favor is how utterly devoid of logos or otherwise identifying marks it is. It isn’t flashy, it looks like a mostly-flat black panel. I find that appealing, and I suppose if you don’t, you can see the above paragraph with regard to putting a bunch of stuff on it. Your choice!
It included a charger and a manual and not too much else. The charger doesn’t appear to be a rapid charging unit but it claims about 20 hours of battery life off a single charge, so you have plenty of juice between charging sessions.
Usage
I’m going to start off with the two things I don’t really like. If these are dealbreakers for you, then I’ve saved you some time!
The keyboard sometimes doubles up my keystrokes. I think it’s a pretty sensitive keyboard and sometimes I’m not especially precise or delicate with my typing and so that might be mostly my problem. I’m not pleased about this but also I’m using this thing to crank out drafts at speed so I generally don’t mind thinking that I’ll fix it later when I pull the document to a different machine to edit.
The charger, mentioned above, isn’t a rapid one. The battery display doesn’t appear to demonstrate how much charge is left. Combining these two things results in a bit of a guessing game about when to put the device on the charger for a while. I don’t mind this very much but I happen to be impatient enough to be slightly bothered by this.
The doubling of keystrokes aside, the keyboard is fine to use. It took about 26 seconds to get used to the size of it and to modify my style a little bit to accommodate a wildly different size of keyboard. I found this to be no big deal. I actually like typing on it and I’m otherwise a mechanical keyboard enthusiast.
The software that drives this thing is built with some clever layout that lets you navigate menus quickly without the aid of a mouse. In fact, it is worth mentioning that you cannot use a mouse with this thing at all. After working up a bunch of drafts on it and navigating the various menu functions squirreled away on the thing, I don’t feel like I would ever require a mouse to get stuff done.
When you unfold the device, it briefly shows a logo and then opens right into either a blank document or the thing you were working on last time. It does this very quickly and you get responsive control of the unit in short order. That is to say, there is no extended initialization or booting that it has to do. It is deeply satisfying to open something up and get to work that quickly.
When you want to get the work off the device and on to a different machine, you have a few options. Truthfully the only one I’ve explored was just using the included cable to hook it up to a computer and pull the text file that way. It works about the same as a thumb drive.
Experience
I really like using the Pomera. It doesn’t offer any possibility of being distracted and it doesn’t offer anything other than the functions you’d find useful for text manipulation. It is a wonderful thing to feel like you’re not struggling against the tool you’re using. This meant that I kept coming back to it to type more words into it, and this was ideal given that my goal was to produce a bunch of drafts.
It’s also nice that it has a tiny footprint on whatever I’m using as a desk. I don’t have to manage cables or any other sort of necessary clutter. I can cart it around with me and get straight to writing wherever I happen to be.
Because it kicks straight down into a document when you open it up, without any initialization preamble, it facilitates jotting down quick notes before the thought escapes. I’d put it on par with thumbing through a little notebook and digging out a pen in terms of time spent getting ready to write.
Most importantly, it does not show me ads. There is no way it could show me ads. It does not show me push notifications, or alert me to updates, or beg me to sign up for a mailing list. Doing those things is not within the capability of the device. This is such a strong mark in its favor that I would use it if the keys were coated in razors and lemon juice.
Idle Thoughts
It’s exciting to have a device that has really unique software running on it.
On one hand, there are compromises to the device because it is certainly a computer in some fashion, but a lot of its computational capability is stripped away in favor of focusing strictly on writing. You will not be calculating on the Pomera. You will not be managing a spreadsheet, opening a browser, or any other such thing.
On the other hand, such a single-purpose device highlights the sheer amount of compromises that personal computing routinely asks of you. You can open a document and write, but only after these updates and after viewing these ads on your way there. It feels like something is always attempting to wrest my attention away from whatever it is I’m actually trying to do. Yes, of course, you can ignore this. Stepping away from the necessity of ignoring it demonstrates just how tiresome it is, though.
Would I Recommend It?
Yeah, wholeheartedly. The price of admission was well worth the fun and the difference of experience. I would liken it to a cycling computer from Garmin with regard to the focus that it brings to one activity. When I’m out pedaling around, my Garmin facilitates a bunch of cycling stuff that I’m interested in. In a similar way, the Pomera facilitates a bunch of stuff that I’m interested in when I want to write.
If nothing else, I’d want you to be aware of it. I want you to know that there is a different world of technology available, something aside from the realm of attention-snatching devices that don’t really seem like they want to facilitate something in your life. Even if you’re not interested in the Pomera, I think the concept that produced it is a fantastic one.
Joe Writes Software 