May 7, 2020

Ergonomic keyboards

I have always been surprised that there are not more ergonomic keyboards on the market and that ergonomic keyboards have not taken the world by storm. On the other hand, it is well known that there are better keyboard layouts than the Qwerty, but very few people use anything else.

I am currently typing on a Microsoft "Natural multimedia" keyboard. I tried a "4000" model once, but it was pretty bad. The "natural" has one ergonomic feature (that I now consider essential) namely that is angles the left and right halves of the keyboard to accomodate the angle your arms naturally come towards the keyboard from the left and right. When I first tried one of these, the adjustment period was less than a day, and I have been hooked ever since. But, it is possible to go a lot farther.

It turns out this is a huge rabbit hole. You can make your keyboard a new hobby!

ErgoDox EZ

This keyboard has separate left and right halves. It also lays the keys out, not on a straight line, but to correspond to a normal persons varying finger lengths. It is also endlessly configurable. It is open source, so you can reprogram the Atmega32 inside should you care (and know how) to do so. Some people like to endlessly refine and optimize their tools. Others get to where they can use them, then settle in -- I may be more like the latter, in which case the configurability of the Ergodox may be wasted on me.

Something called QMK is recommended firmware.

I am tempted to purchase an Ergodox-EZ with Cherry MX brown keyswitches. The cost would be roughly $300. You can buy it without keycaps and then buy whatever keycaps you like separately.

One comment: "Just putting ESC where Caps-Lock now is, is a huge win for Vim users".

Kinesis Advantage

You can get the Kinesis with MX Brown or Red (I would go with brown). It does not provide for arm angle, but it provides "tenting", i.e. it lifts the thumb side of each hand 20 degrees. It also places the keys in a cavity or well, so that you don't have to reach with your fingers, just straighten out or curve your fingers to reach a key. Splitting the keyboard would make this perfect, but they do separate the right and left more than standard keyboards and with the tenting this might work out fine. The price is $320 on Amazon. The Dactyl might be what you want if you are wishing you could saw the Kinesis Advantage in half.

X-Bows

The idea here is to make an ergo keyboard that is not so radical that people find it impossible to use without a big learning curve.

These use Gateron switches instead of Cherry. It isn't clear if that is good or bad. Appaarently the Gateron switches are optical (they break an IR beam) rather than purely mechanical. The switches (and hence the keyboard) end up being less expensive. Their inexpensive model is $120, and if you want the same thing all aluminum it is $200. So they are trying to remove the hurdles of both price and usability to let people use an Ergonomic keyboard. You have to applaud that.

A bad thing is that the software to configure the keyboard is Windows only. There are promises about linux and mac software, but it doesn't seem that it will ever happen. A 2017 review said they were promising "linux software soon" back then, so a person certainly should worry.

On the other hand, Ergodox has open source firmware and all kinds of support for customization for use with vim (Search "vim and ergodox").

People say the red switches are too light and they get accidental key presses. The silent brown are not recommended so much as the brown that click.

Non-ergo with mechanical switches

I am tempted to go with a normal layout keyboard with mechanical switches, just to see how I feel about the whole machanical switch thing. My son uses a Steelseries Apex M500. This was a $100 keyboard offered in Cherry MX Red or Blue and advertised as a "gaming keyboard". Currently for $120 you can get this DAS keyboard with MX brown:

The Fuhlen G87 is available with MX brown, but again, is $101.

Mechanical switches

A lot has been said already. I found this quote in the comments section of a Hackaday article:
"Any nice switch is soooo much better than the normal/bad keyboards, that virtually anything you do will be usable if not “perfect”. You can’t really go wrong, even if you later find that in retrospect you could have gone righter."
As the Hackaday article discusses, there are also keycap choices to be made. Note just in color and looks, but in shape and profiling. There are almost too many choices. Like this comment:
If you want a nice sculpted set of keycaps for your Ergodox, an alternative to SA is the MT3 profile. If you’re thinking of DSA keycaps, look into XDA and MDA.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!