The Canon Typestar 10-II electronic and thermal typewriter
📆 2025-09-01 15:40
I picked up a Canon Typestar 10 II recently.
A photo of the Canon Typestar 10-II with packaging
Meet Luna ! She's my daughter's cat and she photobombed the photos in this blog post ...
It's a little electronic typewriter from the late 80s. Runs on batteries 🔋 or plugged in 🔌, prints quietly on thermal paper (I use fax paper rolls) or normal paper if you have a ribbon cassette (as you can see if the photo above I have an almost empty ribbon cassette and a brand new still in original packaging cassette). Not exactly modern, but I'm finding it oddly useful, just like the little thermal printer my daughter received as a gift.
🖨️ Tiny thermal printer is a lot of fun
There's something calming about it. No WI-FI 📡, no tabs, no distractions. The words go straight to paper, no undo button waiting to tempt me. It forces me to keep moving forward. That feels good.
Editing isn't even that bad.
The tiny built-in screen 📺 lets me type and review a line at a time before it prints. It's just enough to catch mistakes without turning into endless backspacing.
A close up photo of the screen
I actually find this balance refreshing - I can correct typos, but I don't spend hours rewriting the same line.
The Typestar even offers some formatting tricks
I can underline text, center titles, add background shading, or even print letters with an outline for emphasis.
Printing the demo ... Luna is there as well
It feels a little like a word processor's "bold" button, but entirely in hardware. For a machine this small, it's surprisingly capable.
It's also portable
I can carry it like a slim laptop 💼, set it on a desk anywhere, and just type. The hum of a laptop fan is replaced by the soft scratch of paper feeding through. If I want to write outside, I don't worry about glare on a screen or a battery dying after a couple of hours. The Typestar sips power and runs far longer than most laptops.
Of course, the output is simple
Black letters on plain paper. No fonts, no colors, no formatting tricks beyond those few built-in ones. But that limitation is freeing. The words matter more than the layout. When I read what I wrote, it feels immediate, like a letter or a note, instead of another file lost somewhere in a folder.
Yes, the text fades eventually ⏳
But I think that's part of the charm. If I want to save something long-term, I can always scan it or photocopy it. The original page becomes more like a draft, a temporary artifact of the writing process. Using the Typestar has changed how I think about writing. When I'm on a computer, I tend to polish every sentence. I rewrite, I delete, I chase perfection. On the Typestar, I just write. The machine won't let me fuss too much, and that's a relief. It's closer to sketching than editing. I didn't expect to enjoy this machine as much as I do. For drafts, letters, and even just clearing my head 💭, the Typestar still has a place today. It slows me down in the best way, reminding me that words don't need to be instant or perfect.
Sometimes "outdated" tools turn out to be exactly what I need...