Retro writing 15 – Pomera DM250

…and my current writing setup

Just recently, our small son began his kindergarten experience, getting used to it at first, just for two or three hours each morning. This schedule allowed me to go every weekday morning to a cafe nearby and try to focus on writing.

Accidentally, this forced schedule also came at a great time because I not only have two book projects requiring quite a lot of writing work but also managed to set up my writing environment and tools to my satisfaction. And so, using my son’s kindergarten time for cafe writing, I was able to create and edit more than twenty thousand words in the first two weeks in a very comfortable way.

The Pomera DM250

The main part of my new writing system revolves around the Pomera distraction-free writing device.

I have been using a Pomera (an older DM30 model) for a few years now, like it a lot, and reviewed it HERE, so I was ecstatic to see that the updated, all-new DM250 finally restored the option to change the interface language to English which was sadly missing from the DM200 for some reason. I bought the new model straight away for all the writing I had planned and got to work setting it up!

The new Pomera DM250

Pomeda DM30

Hardware

The Pomera devices are dedicated, distraction-free electronic writing and memo-taking solutions. In Japan, these are advertised to writers, journalists, translators, and also to anyone who writes a lot in meetings. Here, in-person business meetings are still very popular, and many office workers can be seen lugging around company-issued Panasonic notebooks and such all the time. A whole market of more enjoyable solutions exists for them – electronic notebooks, hybrid pens that connect to smartphones via Bluetooth, e-ink tablets, and the Pomera series devices are all parts of it. The Pomera is made by a company that mainly produces office supplies called Kingjim (with “jim” meaning office – Kingjim is Office King) with already ten years of development invested in this products line!

The DM100 and 200 series devices look like very slimmed-down laptops with no touchpad and a small screen. I like this form factor as it enables me to use the DM250 anywhere I want, even if I have no table handy. Typing on a train is easily done!

Typing on the move!

The device is light (only 620g), built of sturdy-feeling plastic, and very compact when folded. The updated DM250 really feels like a device with a long lineage with solved problems and smoothed corners that I can use every day for proper work without worrying about it too much – it’s not some DIY project or first-generation Kickstarter thing!

The screen is a backlit 7 inches TFT panel with 1024×600 pixel resolution (WSVGA) and is very readable even though it is just a usual color LCD screen used for displaying black and white text.

If possible, I would prefer something like a memory LCD (like the one in Panic’s game console) with an optional backlight for longer battery life and visibility in direct sunlight, but what’s here is not bad.
The hinge is sturdy, with just the right amount of friction, allowing for good adjustment of the screen angle. The keyboard, even though on the smaller side, has a good, tactile feel to it and enough space between the keys to make typing quite comfortable. We also get (as with the other Pomera’s) a row of F-keys that can be customized.

The device offers an SD card slot along with the built-in 1.3GB of storage and USB type C connectivity/charge port (that now has a charging status LED too). The battery is rated for about 24 hours of writing work and cannot be replaced – but can be charged on the go from a USB power bank. Personally, I’m more of a replaceable AA cells supporter for smaller devices like this, but the slim profile does not allow this, sadly. How problematic will it be to replace the battery in a few years? Guess I will see.

Lastly, on the hardware side, we also get WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity for sharing files with iOS and Android devices and also use the Pomera as a wireless keyboard.

Software

The writing environment was refreshed a bit, also with a few things I’m very happy to have. Apart from the glorious return of the full English language interface, the DM250 now supports natively UTF-8 text files, has two new fonts we can choose from, and improved outline mode amongst a lot smaller quality-of-live updates.

Sans-serif font

Serif font

At its heart, it’s still the same, kind of bland maybe, but a very capable and reliable dedicated writing system. We can open, save and edit plain text files while having most of the modern text-editing options at hand: selecting with SHIFT, copy, paste, undo shortcuts (like CTRL+C, CTRL+V, and so on just work as expected!), quick navigation through text with keyboard shortcuts (ALT+arrows and so on), search and replace (with regular expressions!), placing markers and navigating through them, inserting timestamps and special characters.

selecting text

UTF-8 and Shift-JIS character tables!

The interface also offers a lot of viewing options like opening two documents side-by-side (or the same document twice), outline and scenario views using the titles we place for navigation, displaying line numbers, inverting the screen colors, working fullscreen, displaying the invisible characters (tabs, spaces, etc.), and controlling the font size, line spacing, page layout, margins and even writing direction.
As this is a Japanese device, we can write vertically, from right to left, with a defined page width and length, or even use the Japanese writing sheet layout too (each letter in a small box).

The Pomera also has some bonus functionality like character count, calendar, and dictionaries built in, but that’s it – the DM250 is a dedicated writing device – there are no apps, internet, or anything else to distract us from the task at hand.

One funny quirk of this system is that it allows for writing memos into the specific days of the calendar – so, in theory, the Pomera can be used like a digital journal, but in this mode, it only allows us to save the files to the built-in memory.

The text-sharing functionality allows for a lot of freedom to manage the files: we can save files to the device itself (it has backup and trash folders, too), to the SD card, share, and sync using a dedicated iOS Android app, send text using a QR code displayed on the screen (this way even without the app a smartphone can copy the text), and even send the written file directly via an e-mail (GMAIL or SMTP servers) account like the Freewrite does! Of course, we can also connect the device itself with a USB-C cable to browse the files too.

If that’s not enough, the device can also be used as a wireless keyboard to type directly to a smartphone (I don’t see myself using this functionality as I can just write on the Pomera, but maybe if one suddenly has to chat on Slack while in a cafe or something?).

Anyway, it’s great to be able to manage the files in so many ways and not be locked in any proprietary file and sync system! (I’m pointing at you, Freewrite and ReMarkable!)

Usability:

The thing that surprised me the most about the DM250 was how fast it was – the documents, even big ones from SD card, open, save and scroll in an instant! There’s no lag here whatsoever, even when copying or cutting large portions of text or using menus. This is thanks to the fast hardware (it’s known to be able to run full desktop Linux!) but also to the LCD display that does not lag like the e-ink ones.

The file management interface is a bit confusing but allows for a lot of freedom in saving, loading, copying, and moving files and folders around. It opens .txt file and does not show hidden files that begin from a “.” so I don’t see all the mess Mac system leaves everywhere, with hidden settings and icon files, etc.

I got used to the keyboard quickly and can write as fast as on any laptop with no strain. I configured all the F-row keys to do the menu options I use the most and put a piece of tape as a reminder of what is what – it’s very useful to have all my favorite functions just there on the keyboard.

So far, the DM250 is easily the best dedicated writing device I have used! Even if it’s not the flashiest or most stylish and does everything in a dull, understated, office-like way, it’s just great. The Pomera just gets out of the way, and I can focus on writing.

There are only a few things I would like to change about it though, maybe in the DM300 edition:

The screen is VERY reflective. Enough so that I just had to paste a mat screen protector foil or deal with always seeing everything that was behind me reflected in the screen while I wrote. In my opinion, the mat screen protector is a MUST-BUY with the Pomera DM250, and I would not imagine using the device without it. Just look at the photos below!

NO PROTECTOR

WITH MAT FILM PROTECTOR

I also wish the screen would be a bit brighter with an option to control the warmth of the backlight.

As I said in the intro, I would actually prefer a different technology display, like a fast, memory LCD, backlit screen, but apparently, we are not there yet.
Also, having a backlight keyboard would be a nice thing to have, too, as I can’t touch type.

On the software side, I would like some more fonts to choose from or the ability to upload my own (if possible, with some not-monospaced ones, too!), a proper word count (not just character count that includes spaces), and a better file management screen would be great. If I could go even further – an English dictionary and thesaurus added to the Japanese ones would be a cherry on top!

Overall:

I like the Pomeras, and especially this newest iteration, very much. It feels robust, to the point, solid, and well-rounded. It’s not flawless (screen technology), but it does what it promises to do exceptionally well. And that’s also a thing that I like about the company’s approach – Kingjim does not promise me the ultimate writing tool to double my word count, cure me of writer’s block, or make me an inspired novelist overnight. They just promise a good, distraction-free, and compact dedicated text processor, and I’m pleased to report that, on that front, indeed, they delivered!

The workflow:

I use a dedicated SD card to store all my memos, articles, text files, and such, as just plain UTF-8 .txt files in folders. The Pomera handles all of this beautifully. When I finish writing or editing something on the device, I save it back to the SD card and also a second time to the in-built memory – this way, I have a backup of all things I wrote on the Pomera, just in case.

On my laptop, I insert the SD card into the side slot and use an app to sync the files to or from a folder on my drive. That’s it! If you don’t mind big corporations reading all your stuff, you could also use a service like Google Drive or Dropbox to backup and sync your SD card each time you pop it into your computer – it works well!

If I want to, I can also open the files on my iPhone or iPad – using an SD card reader dongle – it’s very fast and straightforward.

On the Mac

For years I experimented with many writing applications like Bear, Memos, Scrivener, Atom, or Obsidian, but recently I chose to keep things as simple as I can. I have all my text files in a folder that I use as my memo storage. It has sub-folders for ease of navigation and only .txt files in the UTF-8 encoding. This way, I can open my texts with almost any text editor.

For writing and editing on my Mac and Linux, I currently use Sublime Text with only some Markdown plugins installed. As I use Markdown on the Pomera (it supports titles starting with # marks) and for simple text styles, like bold or italic, I set up Sublime Text so it recognizes .txt files as Markdown and colors the text accordingly. That’s it. There are many plugins for Sublime that aim to make writing prose even more pleasurable, but I rarely use any of them – I do most writing on the Pomera anyway.

Having my texts in this simple form allows for a lot of flexibility – I could use Obsidian if I wanted, or sync the files to my iPad or iPhone with iCloud and use a writing app, like iWritier Pro there too, but I currently don’t feel the need for that.

After I finish writing a particular thing, I often run it through Grammarly to do a simple check on my English as the last step before uploading it to my blog or saving the file to be used in a book.

Freedom:

I’m currently very happy with this simplified approach to writing and managing my texts. Yes, there are some options in more advanced applications that would be nice to have from time to time (like online sharing and collaboration or Obsidian’s contents management etc.), but being free from any particular closed system with my plain .txt files and also being free from my computer or tablet when writing on the Pomera is great!

Whenever I feel playful, I can try to write on a different cool device I’m testing or play around with different apps on my computer, but the Pomera DM250, .txt files on an SD card, and Sublime Text set seem to be a very robust and flexible solution that simply works well and allows me to focus on what I should be doing – writing the next article or few chapters for my book.