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Comment by lycopodiopsida | Hacker News Reader

I am into the mechkebs as a hobby (have a KA2, Kyria, Model01, Redox and parts for Dactyl Manuform laying around) but it the first time I've ever heard of Drop, fwiw.

I think that mechanical keyboards are an interesting (if expensive) hobby, but standard keyboards with only mechanical switches and and funny keycaps are too expensive for what they are providing. They are a bit nicer to type with, but switches are in general not the problem of a keyboard. The layout and ergonomics are.

You have to switch to an ortholinear split with a firmware to see how different the ergonomics of a keyboard can be if we push it further and do non let legacy drive our decisions.

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> I think that mechanical keyboards are an interesting (if expensive) hobby

I'd love to own a mk, but I don't because I refuse to pay the huge markup just because "it's mechanical!". I'm typing this comment on a decades old Logitech K120 that's even missing some keycaps, that cost me, what, 10 bucks? But you're telling me I can't find a ultra basic key caps set for under $20 because...? "Hey, this Ducky is tacky but doesn't look that bad, how much is it?" $125? Go duck yourself.

The scene is completely nuts, there's no space left for people who just want to type on a mk, it's all about exclusivity, "the endgame", limited editions, artisan caps... Bullshit. There's no "mechanical K120". There's no room left for full sized, affordable, practical, run of the mill, "Ford Model T" mk. So thanks, and good riddance. I'll just buy another K120. I could pay $20, even $40, for "a good feel", but it's not worth $100.

Imagine the same scene on mice. "Hey, are you tired of your ball mouse? Want an optical mouse? Well, the technology is cheap, but we're going to charge you $120, just because!!"

I don't want a mk as a hobby, I want it as a tool. But it looks like we're incapable of conceptualizing a mk as a tool. Sorry for the rant, and pardon my French.

I own just one mechanical keyboard and it’s my daily driver, when I type lot I plug it in and off I go, otherwise I’m fine with the not so good-to-type-alot laptop keyboards. Mechanical keyboards are a good investment if you don’t go overboard and become obsessed with them. They do offer a very good feedback and are pleasant to type on. My typing error rate is the lowest on my mechanical keyboard, and I guess that says quite a bit. My mechkeb is a Leopold FC750R and couldn’t be happier with my purchase, which i expect I will own for quite some time.

Thanks for the input, I'll check it out.

I think a lot of the interesting keyboards are really small series, and such things cost - there is such thing as "economy of scale".

The cheapest KB I've built myself was a Kyria for just over 200 EUR with cheap keycaps but relatively expensive switches - Kailh Pink, as I remember. Imagine building something like Keyboardio Model01 (https://shop.keyboard.io/products/model-01-keyboard?variant=...): You have to build a case in low numbers, you have to design and print the PCB boards, you have to order the switches (Jesse, the author of it told once, that Cherry was not even interested in talking to him due to the relatively low number of switches he could take off them) and you still have to solder and assemble it, which for small shops is a manual job. Even the most mass-produced ergonomic keyboard I know if, Kineses Advantage2 is still a very niche product.

So all the "endgame" photos of another 60% KB with "artisan" keycaps and expensive pre-lubed switches are indeed bullshit. But you can get a lot of gain out of it if you go for ergonomic keyboards, even if you get the cheapest switches and keycaps (gatreon, for example) because the ergonomic improvement you can get out of a keywell or a proper thumb cluster can be life changing. Especially if you have a predisposition for developing RSI or similar problems. But it will still not be cheap. Or you can buy one and stick to it, you don't have to do it as hobby. Buy a Kinesis Advantage and do not worry that much. If you later want to mode it, there are still multiple possibilities.

Your French is fine! :)

I'm typing this on an Ajazz Ak33 which I've owned for several years and it's still working perfectly fine. You can find it for less than $30 on aliexpress. There are quite a few options of mechanical keyboards for less than $50 .

Check out cloud nine. Full sized, split mechanical, and looks near identical to the Microsoft Ergo 4000. I typed full speed immediately. Still pricey, but feels like a tool to me.

> Imagine the same scene on mice. "Hey, are you tired of your ball mouse? Want an optical mouse? Well, the technology is cheap, but we're going to charge you $120, just because!!"

My, I better not tell you what a MX Master, G903 or Kone Pro Air retails for...

That said, I think you're asking too much if you expect a mk to cost about the same as a membrane keyboard; I think a 2x-3x price increase is totally reasonable considering that a membrane keyboard is trivial to assemble compared to one made of 102 individual switches, and that the production scale is so vastly different.

On the other side, I'm typing this on a Lenovo keyboard that's technically a membrane but it's so sturdy and clicky it feels pretty close to the brown-switch Cooler Master I have at home (which was definitely a cheaper mech, I think I paid $65 or so for it).

>There's no room left for full sized, affordable, practical, run of the mill, "Ford Model T" mk.

I bought a boring (by mk community standards) Filco Majestouch in 2010. I think it was around that $125 price point, but you know what, it is at least 10 times better than the keyboard I had before it and costs less than 4c per day. I wouldn't even be surprised if this thing lasted another 10 years.

Personally I don't understand why people spend thousands of dollars on new PC hardware just to use a 10$ mouse and keyboard. Of course people are free to prioritize whatever they want, and I'm not suggesting everyone should have DIY custom $400+ keyboards, but if you put a 10 year old K120 infront of me with missing keycaps, I'd be measurably unhappy while trying to use my computer.

I bought 2 of these in tenkeyless (for work and home) and both are still in great shape. I did switch to Kinesis at work about a year later but is 9-10 years of daily use and they all look almost identical to when new.

Finding a keyboard you like is expensive but once you do they pretty much last forever. At work the Kinesis has outlasted 5 MacBooks and serval PCs. It is by far the cheapest computer peripheral when time of use is considered.

These days you can get solid mechanical switch keyboards in the $60 to $100 range. The only downside is that they all seem to come with LED backlighting and obnoxious gamer marketing, but once you turn off the light shows they're perfectly good keyboards. I think they would qualify for "Model T" status.

They have mechanical switches but often lack N-key rollover (I think the blog post gets this wrong) and instead have a watered down form marketed as "anti-ghosting". But that's more than enough for all purposes except maybe Emacs olympics and social prestige with keyboard-philes.

I bought a Filco Majestouch 2 three years ago when I finally had to retire my 8 year old Sidewinder X4, which was a $40 membrane keyboard with deeper-than-usual key travel. I can definitely say moving from that to the Majestouch 2 has not made me a better programmer, typist, or gamer. And it hasn't helped with ergonomics either. It just feels better the same way shelling out the extra couple hundred bucks for a high end graphics card makes games feel better.

I owned an actually ergonomic split-key keyboard as well (Goldtouch) when I developed RSI-related wrist problems as a teenager and kept it around for 15 years. That keyboard made an actual difference and I would take it out of the closet whenever my wrists started acting up even from the Majestouch 2. But you don't usually see ergonomics front and center in super expensive mechanical keyboards - because IMO in that price range and in that community it hasn't been about practical concerns for a while. And that's fine - I'm not going to judge someone's choice of things to collect - but I see no practical benefit to spending substantially more on mechanical keyboards.

It’s interesting you mention this, as I (somebody who has always used basic keyboards) just recently bought a split ortholinear mechanical keyboard for this exact reason. Curious to see what the experience is like.

The ideals of improved ergonomics and typing efficiency were much more interesting to me than fancy keycaps... but looking cross-sectionally at the keyboard space while researching my purchase, I found that the opposite was mostly true in terms of what attracted the most attention. Strange.

>looking cross-sectionally at the keyboard space while researching my purchase, I found that the opposite was mostly true in terms of what attracted the most attention. Strange.

It is not that strange - people who aim for ergonomic builds are a small community of an already small (if increasing) community. Most people do not want something like a new keyboard to mess too much with their motor memory.

That fits for me. I got two mechanical keyboards at the same time. One mirrors the Microsoft Ergo: cloud nine. The other is unique in the layout: ergodox ez. On this, my typing speed dropped to a third of normal. With the cloud nine, i typed at full speed minute one. The twice as expensive ergodox ez sits in my closet.

In my experience it doesn't take very long on a new keyboard set or even a new layout entirely before one gets fairly up to speed. When I built my Lets Split v2 ortholinear, I put dvorak on it and getting up to speed was surprisingly fast.

The ergonomic reasons behind the lets split/ergodox make them quite worthwhile. I love my HHKB2 but a split keyboard in general feels much better for my posture.

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