Hacker News Reader

Comment by ridiculous_fish | Hacker News Reader

What sort of keyboard are you looking for, for what use? It might help by sharing your favorite keyboard, and what you like about it.

Some of the features to consider (by no means exhaustive):

1. Width: 60%, TKL, or full-size

2. Height: Normal or low-profile

3. Key layout: Ergonomic, ortho, staggered

4. OS-friendly layout: Mac or Windows

5. Switches: clicky, tactile, linear

6. Misc: RGB, programmable keys, wireless

Personally I like 60% low-profile clicky keyboards. I use a Keychron K7 at home and MX Keys Mini at work.

View on HN

I very much like my Lenovo thinkpad laptop keyboard. I like the compact layout, proportion and sturdiness of it. Do you think I’d be happy with the Keychron?

That is indeed very compact. I like compact keyboards too. You didn't mention gaming so I'm going to assume you don't care too much about that.

If you live near a Best Buy, pay one a visit, they usually have keyboards on display which you can type on. I suggest trying at least the following:

1. Logitech MX Keys Mini. This provides a very nice laptop-like typing experience.

2. Logitech G815/915. This is a "gaming" keyboard with low profile mechanical clicky ("blue") switches.

Based on that, you can decide if you care about mechanical switches or not. If you really like the low-profile clicky feeling, the Logitech are great, but wide compared to your Thinkpad, and also expensive (>$200). Keychron has narrower versions with lots of customizability. There's some other vendors too, here's a list [1].

If you prefer the laptop-like typing experience, the MX Keys and the new Mini variant are very popular, for a good reason.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/hotiws...

This is a very extreme and stupid suggestion, but... https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi?variant=16969883648090

You’re in luck! There are a number of USB Lenovo thinkpad keyboards with track points, and sometimes trackpads in full and ten key-less formats. (I believe it’s also fairly straightforward to convert a ‘replacement’ x220/x230 keyboard to USB). Here’s a couple of model numbers to get started: FRU 0B47221 FRU 40K9427

I also have a Lenovo laptop, it’s an Ideapad. And am very happy with how it is for coding - which is what I use it for.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com