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Comment by lrvick | Hacker News Reader

FWIIW friends and I have used, bought, and built a lot of these but the build quality and comfort of the Moonlander surpasses everything. Yet to hear anyone that has tried one that switched away from it. It is also the most expensive, but in this case you get what you pay for IMO.

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For anyone else reading this thread- FWIW I bought a Moonlander a few months ago and I haven't been able to switch to it. It's missing just enough keys that I haven't been able to figure out a layout that seems good enough to stick with long enough to get used to it, and so when I use it it's still painfully slow.

There are some extra keys, but some of them seem hard to use well (the big red triangle keys at the top of the thumb clusters) and other things that sound great in practice, like "hold" = modifier but "tap" = insert some character, in practice have turned out to have more annoying rough edges than I had hoped.

It's very well-made though, the configurator works good, etc. Seems like a high-quality gadget, but I wish I thought a bit more about what I would do for arrow keys, special characters, modifiers, etc.

I found the Kinesis thumb clusters a lot more usable when I used to have one, but I really wanted to try a split keyboard this time.

Have you tried using the extra 2 layers? Multiplies the number of keys. Also, print your layout while you learn it to remember where things are.

yeah I have to figure out how to use the extra layers better, and then use it enough to get used to them I think. Printing out is a good tip, thanks.

I haven't tried the moonlander. In which ways do you find it superior to the Ergodox EZ? What made me go for the EZ over the moonlander was the extra thumb buttons. Admitted, I do not use those too often, however, they are still quite useful.

I thought I would miss the extra thumb cluster buttons but the firmware improvements on long-press vs short-press to get different keys have made them needless. I much prefer having the big modifiers.

Build quality is also much higher, and the attached wrist rests really help after standalone ones floating all over my desk for years.

I find 6 thumb keys is all I need for all day typing. I use home row mods, so Ctrl, Alt, GUI and Shift are all accessed via holding down a home row key.

Some folks make do with 4 thumb keys.

can confirm..was skeptical but now I could never go back to a normal layout for daily driving...it's a dream and worth every penny and more

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