Coolest custom mechanical keyboards
cybernews.com
cybernews.com
And before fan boys attack me, both keyboards worked for a while and then developed problems. In the dz60 case somehow the cascading comm channel of the RGB stopped working. In the kbd67, far right column quit responding even though I trace the continuity to the atmel microprocessor.
Cannot find a schematic for the kbd67 so I’m reduced to buying another so I can compare the circuits....
Another dislike is that full size keyboards are scorned and generally unavailable. Hey check it out, I’m a full sized adult doing full size job with my pc, so I actually do use the number pad, etc.
Overall bad value for money and too much social posing.
I don't understand this trend for less and less keys. I get that it can be nice to have more room on the desktop but why would you give up the arrow- and F-keys. They are so useful and the space benefit without them is marginal.
I'm glad it's working out for you, and I'll certainly sneer a little bit less at them in the future, but just using my anecdotal experience, a lot of RSIs make chording keys difficult, and most people who use small form factor keyboards say they do so because it makes their desk less cluttered. Maybe it's not just a fashion item... But for a certain segment, it certainly is.
I don't want a numpad because getting my mouse closer to the center of my desk really helps with RSI for me. There weren't many options left at that point, especially since I wanted a UK layout and no unstandard key sizes (limits your options with keycaps).
But yeah, if I could get something that looked as nice and had F+arrow keys I'd probably go for it.
Fwiw I got used to the chords you need to access those pretty fast.
Same. I bought a full-sized keyboard with numpad, but I felt it put the mouse too far off to the right. I much prefer the mouse to rest couple of inches from the enter key.
I think my next one will have it on the left side.
Just an overview: http://xahlee.info/kbd/programable_keypads.html
I think the only disadvantage is it's a separate thing, so you have two things to push away from you if you don't want to use the keyboard.
Same here. I went with a smaller keyboard for ergonomics. Also, I never use F-keys and rarely use the arrow keys, and there are some "60%" layouts (The [Mass]Drop ALT) that still have the arrow keys. I don't care for the RGB and other blingy crap on these, since I really don't look at the keyboard much anyway.
The purpose of the gaps is orientation: you can feel that you are going to press F4, because there's a gap below and to the right of it.
Funnily most laptop keyboards get away with no spaces between any keys even when there might be space. Granted, there are more considerations there, but I think convention has a little to do with it too.
For me - There's another layout named "ABC - Extended", which reverses the two - so £ is on alt-3, but # is back where it belongs. It has a very different compose set behind the alt modifier though, so might be jarring if you frequently use them.
The British PC keyboard layout has # as a first-level key (next to Enter), and some Windows + Mac users manage to set the Mac to use this layout.
Want a numpad? Switch to a different layout on the fly and have a numpad where you want it. Arrow keys? F-Keys? Why not have those on home row with another layout!
It can get gimmicky, but the impetus for it is that less overall finger/wrist movement == more ergonomic but I'm not fully convinced. Instead, I just prefer everything I can get on home row.
Thumb modifiers are also bad for me, as my thumb joints seem particularly sensitive to RSI/arthrosis. One size doesn’t fit all in ergonomics.
I wonder how many of the mouse-haters have a numpad. I used to be one of them until I got rid of it.
But you should've seen the incredulous look I got when I gave a USB number pad for Christmas to a left handed accountant.
in fairness, you can buy separate numpads with the added bonus of being able to put it where you want. That being said, yes. the crazy 60%, etc keyboards are a bit much.
I got a short keyboard (no number pad) for the ergonomics. I've been battling ergonomics pains (mainly shoulder). After reading many articles one mentioned getting a shorter keyboard so you don't have to move your hand as far to transition from keyboard to mouse. I gave it a try and it does help. I do miss the number pad though!
Some of the prices on caps and cases were insane. Then what happens is you get this status on particular makers or products that only had very limited runs and were sold at very high prices and the prices just keep going up.
In the end I settled on a nice mass produced 60% board that suited me, got a relatively cheap case and some caps to taste, sold the other boards and left it at that.
It was fun for a while, but it's a deep rabbit hole and quite expensive. I also noticed that for many (including myself to some degree) it turns into a 'collect and show off' endeavour, where your status in the community is basically tied to how much money you've spent. And that just wasn't the game I wanted to play any more.
But I find it very strange that some of the most popular mechanical keyboards are much less ergonomic than a cheap Dell keyboard -- especially the Planck Keyboard, and anything with a fixed 1970s "wedge" shape.
In an effort to show there are some reasonable options, I made (strongly deriving from an earlier website on GitHub) and continue to maintain a gallery of ergonomic mechanical keyboards: https://aposymbiont.github.io/split-keyboards/
One; the "audiophile" mindset has afflicted mechanical keyboards -- most people are buying keyboards for the purpose of showing off their keyboards, rather than to enhance their ability to interact with computers. Actual functionality is kind of an afterthought, and style is very important to people.
Two; it's easy enough to make your own keyboard out of commodity parts that there might not be any market for unusual designs. What is available in bulk is what is profitable to manufacture in bulk, and that's what you see advertised in your "social media marketing bs". But, it's easy to make your own and opt-out of all of that.
I wanted a split keyboard with the two halves a certain distance apart, thumb keys that were the exact size of my thumbs, and a numberpad in the middle. Shockingly, no such thing has ever been manufactured in bulk! So I drew one in CAD, printed it out, popped in the keyswitches, hand-wired the rows and columns, connected it to a microcontroller, downloaded commodity firmware to the microcontroller, and I had the exact keyboard I had always wanted. (Turns out: I hated it! But... you don't know until you try.)
I guess what I'm saying is that you should skip the BS and make your own.
Don't get me wrong, custom keyboards are great and it's good to see innovation, but some builds aren't that reasonable in terms of investment for an input device.
This dactyl-manuform with a built-in trackball is to me cooler than any of the keyboards in the article for instance:
https://medium.com/@kincade/track-beast-build-log-a-trackbal...
Pretty disingenuous to judge an article’s merit over a subject it was never meant to be about.
Though I do have a standard layout with the number/symbols row available as well.
I've used a kinesis advantage for years (highly recommend; get your employer to pay for it), and have pretty much never dabbled in other keyboards
My wife has a mechanical keyboard (with arrows/nav, no numpad) but generally prefers the Microsoft ergo offering (non mechanical) for its... ergonomics
I recently bought a friend's group buy [1], and I'm excited! But while it looks great and will probably feel good, I imagine it will primarily be for playing games [2] or decoration. And at the price point of high end mechanical keyboards, it's not cheap decoration. Of course, it won't look or feel cheap either.
The subculture is cool, though. A lot of people here write it off as an expensive hobby, but successful keyboard designers can quit their day jobs. Group buys are the norm because these keyboards are being made professionally in factories where they need to know how many to make. You can't go back and make one more after the run. They are so limited in stock because the designers can't afford to buy more than a few extras (sometimes dozens of extras) to sell after the group buy is over.
Yes, all of that leads to the "hype culture" if you're on the outside, there's a real cred to getting in on a limited run. But like anything, it makes more sense the more you know about it. (Of course, you might still end up leaving the hobby feeling like it was a waste of money!)
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/k6sv12...
[2] a lot of hot keys in games don't make sense for the kinesis advantage if your right hand is on a mouse
The interest check ran a few weeks ago and the group buy will run in a few weeks (group buys are essentially preorders where a certain number of quantity is required in order to achieve some economies of scale so it's not prohibitively expensive).
Have you not had similar experiences with wireless keyboards? I love the layout but am so tired by the constant problems with wireless, especially when the keyboard always sits on the same spot on my desk.
I'll join the Discord, thanks!
And this is not a hobby for the impatient. Group buys take your money now, but often don't deliver for 6 - 12 months.
Some keyboards are unlimited (e.g., Grid 650), but that's typically not the norm.
But that's on the higher end, the "good" stuff. Lots of kits available now that can be assembled at home, or even pre-assembled.
Mechanical Keyboards are nice obviously for the tactile difference and impact on typing speed and sensitivity, but for me the game changer was switching to a split keyboard for the ergonomics. I have always had shoulder pain, and tightness in my triceps. No matter how much I worked on ergonomics .. mouse position, height, etc. I have very broad shoulders/chest, so putting my hands on the keyboard always bowed my chest in and rotated both shoulders slightly forward.
I use the UltimateHackingKeyboard (UHK) now for over a year, and my shoulder and arm pain have all but disappeared. The UHK comes with a relatively short 3-4 inch cable to connect the two halves, and I found that was even to close together. I've since replace with a 12 inch cable and each half of the keyboard sits directly in front of the corresponding shoulder. This lets my arms, pecs,triceps, and back muscles all be in a relaxed position.
These keyboards all appear to have Cherry MX (or clone) switches. So yes, they are custom, but they are somewhat uniform in the switches themselves.
60% keyboards are a gimmick. The addition of arrow keys and a nav cluster adds an inch to the physical footprint and doesn't affect ergonomics or portability enough to matter.
Unless you routinely type in Japanese, Japanese legends do not add anything but visual clutter.
I don't think any of these are office friendly. Too many bright colors and noisy switches.
This comes down to preference I suppose, but from the /r/mkb subreddit it seems that the demographics of mechanical keyboard community is mostly guys in their teens to mid-twenties and mostly gamers, not programmers and power users. I think it's cool that mechanical keyboards are coming back, but it's unfortunate that stock/custom options are so limited. Maybe this will improve as the community grows up.
You'd be surprised how many people are programming on these. The current switches I'm using are about the same volume as rubber domes, and is the keyboard I plan to take back to the office.
That's why nobody ever wrote a good novel with a Bic.
With all the options (larger cable in between the halves, risers, etc.) it's closer to $200 than the $99 base price but still a tremendous value.
An added benefit over most other super ergonomic keyboards is that the design is close enough to standard QWERTY that it's pretty trivial to get going. I've a few friends who have really struggled with the more aggressively altered layouts of some of the other designs.
DIY boards with sandwich case is the cheapest option, but they don't look or feel anywhere near as robust as boards with full case design. You also need to factor in cost of tools to assemble one, and switches and keycaps, so it actually ends up being pretty close to the examples above.
I'm quite fond of the kits sold by https://www.littlekeyboards.com/ They have a good selection of some of the more popular split ergonomic keyboard designs mostly from Japanese keyboard designers with different kits, incl. different case options. I believe they will also assemble the keyboards for you at extra cost.
You can further reduce the cost by ordering the PCB yourself from China, and some components from electronics suppliers, or laser cutting a case yourself at a maker space (or doing without).
It's also possible to do without a PCB, and handwire the whole thing. This is common where there's little alternative, like on the Dactyl or Dactyl Manuform 3D keyboards.
https://en.roccat.org/Keyboards/Vulcan-TKL-Pro
Similarly, there's several Razer mice that use optical switches for their main 2 buttons.
("Optical" here being a switch that is tripped when an object breaks the beam of light)
https://datamancer.com/product-category/?catid=/keyboards/
otherwise my good, ol' IBM M keyboard remains hard to beat ...
All unusable