Cuneflow E-Paper Writing Tablet Uses AI to Record and Transcribe Meetings

I recently reviewed ReMarkable’s Paper Pure, an e-paper writing tablet designed for use in business meetings. The company markets itself as an almost analog think tank, arguing against the use of AI and the disruptions of the digital age. So, think of Cuneflow as a rebuke of that philosophy, as its namesake e-paper writing slate has a built-in voice recorder to record and extract information from those same business meetings. Is that a big enough draw to plunk down your money when it launches on Kickstarter?

The Cuneflow is an A5-sized e-paper writing tablet that packs an 8.2-inch 1,920 x 1,440 E Ink Carta 1000 display. Attached magnetically to the side is a Wacom EMR pen that is reactive, pressure-sensitive, complete with a button and rubber tip. Inside, you’ll find a 2 GHz dual-core ARM SoC with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage. There’s a 2,450mAh battery rated for 7-8 hours of continuous use, and a 24-level front light, which allows the slate to be used at any time of the day, which is key for a device like this.

In addition to the screen lock password, you can use the power button as a fingerprint scanner for one-touch unlocking. The aluminum unibody case weighs 230 grams (8.1 oz), making it slightly heavier than the equivalent Kindle. But it also has a heavenly durability that makes you feel like you are holding an ultra-premium device. Between that and the faux leather brown paper, I get the sense that the tablet’s creators wanted the Cuneflow to feel as capital-C classy as possible.

At the risk of crying you can’t helpthe app looks like someone pointed to something relatable and said “thatbut let’s not be sued.” There’s a two-column editable list of your notebooks, titled Meetings, and a separate tab for your Files. The latter is any PDF or EPUB file you wish to read on the slate, which you can transfer through the company’s web client.

Each Meeting notebook is, as you might expect, a blank worksheet ready to receive your scrawls and doodles. The ceramic stylus nib is small and scratchy, and there is no type of replacement tip in the package. I was surprised when I looked at the risk of wear, and that the small nib could scratch the display cover (or even break).

In terms of writing experience, it’s not it’s badbut you won’t forget that you are dragging the stylus across the screen. It’s incredibly responsive, and I don’t think I’ve seen a single instance of lag or the display needing to refresh midway through writing a long paragraph. The persistent menu bar has only two options: pen or highlighter, the latter even in its simplest settings, making it very difficult to read your handwriting. If you want to adjust the weight of both, you’ll need to go into the swipe-down-from-top-up menu, which is a little awkward. It’s nowhere near as polished and finished an experience as you’ll get using the Remarkable Note or Kindle Scribe.

Each notebook has a microphone icon that, when tapped, activates a slate recording mode that will provide quick transcription of the conversation. (You’ll also be able to tell when the slate is recording, there’s a bright red LED next to the USB port.) When you’re done, you’ll need to wait a minute or two for the AI-generated data to populate the next tab. That includes an overview, timeline and to-do list, as well as many niche options such as disagreements, key questions and potential risks.

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To appease the security-minded, audio is encrypted and piped to the cloud but not stored (Cuneflow lists OpenAI and Gemini as tools it uses). Once the words appear on the screen, the original recording of what was said is erased, with AI-generated text all that remains. In the Insight tab, you’ll be able to identify where each endpoint is coming from, so you can double-check that the system is correct. You can edit the transcript when it is finished, but you may need to do that checking while everything is still fresh in the memory of the meeting participants.

I can see the logical argument for the approach, but it’s something that won’t fit into everyone’s workflow. Maybe because journalism requires you to double or triple check a quote and, if they’re controversial, I like to make sure I have a recording of everything they say as evidence. That’s probably not a concern if you’re running meetings with relatively low numbers, of course.

In my opinion, the transcript is reasonably reliable, but struggles with some very unusual phrases. With most AI-powered products, you shouldn’t expect gospel truth or reliability from it – it successfully recognized that I said “Phoenix Corporation” once, but misspelled it as ‘Felix Corporation’ the second time.

One problem with Cuneflow is that there are a lot of useful tools here, but no way to make them come together. For example, in the AI-generated meeting details tab, there is a to-do list with ticket boxes for each action item. But you can’t actually mark them with a stylus or your finger, which seems a bit silly. And there’s no way to easily drag text from the notes or details tab and drop it into the notebook section to doodle, edit or highlight.

Daniel Cooper of Engadget

There’s a similar lack of integrated thinking in Cunespace, the company’s web client where you can send files to a slide. You can view your Meetings online, but you can’t interact with transcripts or check off the to-do list listed above. Which means you’re left to copy any material you need from your Cunespace to any document you use elsewhere.

I was very happy to learn that you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to the slide for easy typing but, alas, my happiness didn’t last long. Unfortunately, you need to open a text box inside the document and enlarge it, a deeply fiddly process. And there’s no way for the box to grow to fit your text as you write more, unless you pull the handles wider. (Not to mention there’s no way to reorient the display to landscape, which is less than ideal.)

Part of this comes from being a small company with its first product, but also because of the limitations of what these devices can do. After all, these types of distraction-free paper tablets are designed to put unnecessary roadblocks in our actions. Similar to Remarkable, once you’ve created a file in a slide, there’s no good way to extract that information and use it normally. So, I’m not sure right now if it’s possible to join the two split use cases in a way that would make sense.

Unfortunately, there’s no word yet on how much Cuneflow will cost — the company says it will be “within the mid-market range,” with early backers getting a discount.