Hacker News Reader

Comment by 7thaccount | Hacker News Reader

Can any of these be bought? I love mechanical keyboards, but I can only use an ergonomical keyboard

Link dump ahead...

https://falba.tech/ and https://keycapsss.com/ are two suppliers in Europe, both sell kits and the first sells premade keyboards.

There are small companies selling prebuilt keyboards and kits elsewhere, but I don't know them offhand, except for https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33006060286.html from China (as I have one). There's also https://www.reddit.com/r/mechmarket where there are people that will build the keyboard for a fee, or sell keyboards second hand.

Then there's the larger operations like https://ergodox-ez.com/ and https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ only selling built keyboards.

The Reddit wiki is a reasonable reference, and the Xah Lee site it links to: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/buying_gui...

Thanks!

I use a kinesis advantage2 with brown cherry keyswitches. (I think it's available with others) - my only complaint is that it's kinda giant.

Overall, it's pretty great; if you don't want to build your own, and if you don't want to change your keyboard, it's the best choice because it has been in production since the early '90s with few changes to layout; for me? this is big- changing layout is a big deal. The kinesis has been in production long enough that I am pretty confident I won't have to learn a new layout until keyboards go by the wayside

It's probably the least portable keyboard I've owned, though.

Oh yeah, link to buy:

https://kinesis-ergo.com/keyboards/advantage2-keyboard/

You can get them next-day from amazon, too, which is nice for essential parts such as these.

Seconded. I have two of these, one for work and one for home.

Regular keyboards start giving me fatigue after 20–30 minutes, but I type on these all day, all week without issue.

Some cool features:

- you can use arrow keys without moving your hands from the home row!

- with correct posture, it’s possible to hit every key on the keyboard without moving my wrists (though I have long hands)

- fully remappable keys, built-in

- includes some extra key caps so you can customize the layout in the thumb area

- it has a “numpad mode” that can turn the right-hand side of the keyboard into an ergonomic numpad

I use the Advantage2 as well, and now have two so I don't have to lug one around to my second location. But when I got my first one, it sat for almost a year because I couldn't be bothered to learn how to type on it. I'm glad I finally took the plunge though because it has relieved my hand/wrist problems and I love typing on it.

Most recent models can only be found in kits or even parts you need to source. Some people sell assembled keyboards so you can limit yourself to those, but at this point your best bet is to buy a kit or the parts and find someone to assemble it. It's really not difficult to do if you can solder and have a bit of patience, if that's a design with a PCB. Handwiring is more challenging.

One model that's easy to find assembled is the Ergodox. But it's been improved by new models like the Iris, Corne, Gergo, Kyria, Lily58…

Note that you can get an assembled Gergo. I did, knowing me a kit would still be inside a box waiting for some “time”.

I've been using a Kinesis Freestyle Pro for over a year. The wristpad they sell is pretty bad, so I attached the wristpad from my Matias Ergo Pro (the keyboard kept breaking).

It's fantastic and highly recommend it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com