Revisiting the Cuneflow AI Notebook After 4 Months of Development

Around four months ago, I published my first preview of the Cuneflow AI Notebook, an E-Ink device designed primarily as an intelligent meeting companion. At the time, it was still at the early prototype stage, but the underlying concept was intriguing: combine handwritten notes and voice recordings, transcribe the conversation, and then use AI to extract the genuinely useful information from everything that was said and written.

Four months later, I have returned to the Cuneflow AI Notebook to see how it has progressed.

It is important to emphasise that this is still a preview rather than a full review. At the time of writing, the Cuneflow AI Notebook has not officially launched, although I have been told that a Kickstarter campaign is due to begin very soon. The software is therefore still evolving, and there are likely to be further changes before the device eventually reaches customers.

Nevertheless, quite a lot has changed since I last used it. When I switched the device back on, I had three firmware updates waiting for me, eventually bringing it up to version 1.3.3.

And some of the additions are fairly substantial.

A More Versatile Home Screen

One of the first differences I noticed was the addition of two new tabs to the home screen.

Previously, the interface was divided between Meetings and Files. Files provided somewhere to upload and view documents such as PDFs, while Meetings contained the principal note taking, voice recording, transcription and AI functionality.

There are now two additional sections: Apps and Schedule.

Apps is perhaps the more consequential addition because the Cuneflow AI Notebook can now suppirt a reasonably wide selection of third party Android applications.

Google Play is not available. Instead, Cuneflow provides its own app store containing what appears to be a curated collection of third party software. My assumption is that these applications have been selected because they are reasonably well suited to an E-Ink display, although I cannot confirm the precise criteria Cuneflow uses.

There are also several applications already installed. These include the Chrome browser and reading services such as Kindle, Kobo and Libby, as well as Microsoft OneNote.

Unfortunately, I did not have enough time during this revisit to properly investigate third party application performance, so I cannot yet comment on how well these apps actually run.

However, Cuneflow does provide several display modes for different applications, including Best Display, Fast Mode and Turbo Mode. These allow you to alter the compromise between image quality, responsiveness, refresh frequency and ghosting removal according to the application you are using.

Even without thoroughly testing it, the presence of third party applications considerably broadens what the Cuneflow AI Notebook can potentially do.

Schedule Brings Tasks Into the Workflow

The other new home screen tab is Schedule.

This provides a fairly basic calendar with day, week and month views. You can create entries by writing on a new line and then assign them as all day, ongoing or occurring at a particular time.

There does not currently appear to be much differentiation between a calendar event and a task. As a standalone calendar or task manager, therefore, Schedule is relatively rudimentary.

However, its integration with the Cuneflow AI system makes it much more interesting.

After recording and transcribing a meeting, one of the AI Insights options generates a list of actions or next steps based upon the discussion. Once those have been identified, they can be transferred directly into Schedule with a single tap.

This creates a particularly cohesive workflow. You attend a meeting, make handwritten notes and record the conversation. Cuneflow transcribes and analyses everything, identifies the actions arising from the discussion and then allows you to transfer those actions directly into your schedule as things that actually need to be done.

Tasks can also be created directly within Schedule using voice input, which makes quickly adding something considerably more convenient.

It is this sort of integration that makes Schedule more interesting than its fairly elementary appearance might initially suggest.

Improvements to Handwritten Notes

The native Meetings application remains at the heart of the Cuneflow experience, but its note taking functionality has received several improvements.

The selection of writing tools remains rather sparse. There is still only a fountain pen and highlighter, so anyone expecting the breadth of pens and brushes available on some more conventional E-Ink notebooks may be disappointed.

However, there are several useful additions elsewhere.

It is now possible to insert text boxes and type directly into your notes using the virtual keyboard. Handwriting can also be selected using the lasso tool and converted into typed text, which is then placed inside a text box.

The lasso itself has become considerably more functional. Selected handwriting can now be moved, resized and rotated, all of which were conspicuously absent when I first previewed the device.

These are fairly conventional note taking features, but they make the writing environment noticeably less restrictive.

Voice Recording and AI Remain the Main Attraction

Despite all the new functionality, the fundamental purpose of the Cuneflow AI Notebook has not changed.

Its strongest feature remains the combination of handwriting, voice transcription and subsequent AI analysis.

Voice transcription continues to work well and, in my experience, is reasonably accurate at converting spoken conversation into text. Cuneflow then divides that transcription into different topics, making a lengthy conversation considerably easier to navigate and digest.

Once the meeting has finished, AI Insights can process the notes and transcription to extract a surprisingly broad assortment of useful information.

It can generate a general summary and key takeaways, but it can also identify todos, decisions arising from the meeting, disagreements between participants, potential risks and important questions that were raised.

You are not restricted to Cuneflow’s predefined options either. Custom AI instructions can be used to process the meeting information in other ways.

For example, you could ask it to translate the material into another language, produce comprehensive meeting minutes or turn a discussion into the foundations of an article.

This flexibility is important because the underlying concept is applicable to considerably more than conventional business meetings. It could potentially be useful during lectures, consultations, interviews or any other situation in which spoken information and handwritten observations subsequently need to be consolidated into something more coherent.

You could even use it alone, recording a spoken monologue alongside handwritten notes and then asking the AI to organise your thoughts afterwards.

New AI Templates

Another interesting addition is the ability to use templates to determine how AI Insights formats the information extracted from a recording.

There are currently three templates built into the device: Meeting Report, Lecture Summary and Core Discussion.

Additional templates can be enabled through the Cuneflow web application, with options covering areas such as consultation Q&As, interviews, teaching notes and legal transcription, among numerous others.

Perhaps more interestingly, the web application also allows you to create your own templates and upload them to the device.

I did not have sufficient time to explore this functionality comprehensively during this revisit, but it has considerable potential, particularly for people who repeatedly process similar types of conversations and want the resulting information presented in a consistent format.

It is something I would like to investigate more thoroughly in the future.

A Hidden Button on the Front

One small discovery that I completely missed during my original preview is that the Cuneflow logo on the lower bezel is not merely decorative.

It is actually a touch sensitive button (although, in my defence, I believe that it has only recently been enabled).

A tap returns you directly to the home screen, while the firmware release notes state that holding it down opens an AI window.

This produces a partially transparent overlay over the current page, allowing you to handwrite a question about what you are viewing and receive an AI generated response as text within the overlay.

Questions can also be asked using voice.

Voice input is becoming increasingly pervasive throughout the operating system. The virtual keyboard now includes a microphone button, for example, so forms and text fields can be completed through dictation as well as conventional keyboard input or handwriting recognition.

These additions contribute to the impression that Cuneflow is gradually developing its own distinctive interaction model rather than simply reproducing the familiar functionality of other E-Ink tablets.

The Cuneflow Workflow

After returning to the Cuneflow AI Notebook, I think its intended workflow is now even clearer than it was four months ago.

You enter a meeting, lecture, consultation or other discussion and begin recording. During the conflab, you make whatever handwritten notes you consider important.

The spoken conversation is transcribed into text and organised into topics. Afterwards, AI Insights processes both the information that has been recorded and the notes that you have made.

From there, Cuneflow can produce summaries, key takeaways, decisions, questions, risks, disagreements and actionable tasks. You can also submit your own instructions if you want the material processed in a more specific manner.

Finally, those actionable tasks can now be transferred directly into your Schedule.

It is a fairly coherent progression from capturing information, through understanding and organising it, to actually doing something with it.

And I think understanding this workflow is important when considering the Cuneflow AI Notebook, because this is not necessarily a device that is trying to be everything to everyone.

A More Capable Device, But Still a Specialist One

There are now several concessions towards more generalised tablet use.

PDFs can be viewed using the basic native reading application, while the addition of third party Android apps potentially opens the device up to ebook reading, web browsing, OneNote and numerous other uses.

However, if those things are your principal requirements, there are already more accomplished E-Ink tablets available.

Similarly, if you simply want an exceptional digital notebook with an extensive assortment of writing tools, Cuneflow would not necessarily be my first choice. Its native writing application remains relatively modest compared with some established competitors.

Where the Cuneflow AI Notebook becomes much more compelling is when handwriting is only the beginning of the process.

Its raison d’être is not simply capturing what you write. It is combining those handwritten observations with spoken information and then extracting the pertinent details from both.

For someone whose working life involves frequent meetings, interviews, lectures, consultations or similar discussions, that could be genuinely valuable.

Rather than leaving a meeting with several pages of handwritten notes and an hour long audio recording that you will probably never listen to again, you can leave with a transcription, summary, key points, decisions and a list of actionable tasks. Those tasks can now be transferred directly into your schedule.

That is a much more distinctive proposition.

Final Thoughts

Four months after my original preview, I like the direction in which the Cuneflow AI Notebook is developing.

The underlying concept has not fundamentally changed, and I think that is a good thing. Cuneflow still appears to understand that its principal strength lies in being an intelligent meeting and information capture companion rather than another generic Android E-Ink tablet.

Instead, the recent firmware updates have started filling in some of the gaps around that central concept.

The note taking application is becoming more capable. Third party applications substantially increase the device’s versatility. Schedule provides somewhere for AI generated actions to go after a meeting, while custom commands and templates make the AI processing considerably more adaptable.

There are still limitations, and the Cuneflow AI Notebook remains a specialist device. It is also still unreleased hardware running evolving software, so my impressions should continue to be regarded as a preview rather than a definitive review of the eventual retail product.

Nevertheless, there is considerably more substance here than there was when I first encountered it four months ago.

If all you want is a conventional E-Ink notebook, ebook reader or Android tablet, there are more mature alternatives. But if your work involves regularly capturing spoken discussions alongside handwritten notes and subsequently extracting the information that actually matters, the Cuneflow AI Notebook is developing into something rather interesting.

I am particularly encouraged that Cuneflow has expanded the device without losing sight of what makes it distinctive in the first place. Rather than attempting to compete with every E-Ink tablet on every conceivable feature, its strongest proposition remains a very particular workflow: listen, write, transcribe, analyse and act.

For the right user, that could prove considerably more useful than simply having a more generalist digital notebook.

Further info can be found on the Cuneflow Official Website.