Review of the Kinesis Advantage360 Professional
arslan.io
arslan.io
The keyboard is a beast; no one is using it for portability. Why make it smaller by losing a row of keys? (Do the opposite — add another couple of rows, for kicks! Moonlander adds a column [1])
Same for Bluetooth — I don't get the attraction — when are you taking your giant keyboard away from your desk? If you never needed to plug it in, that would be slightly better, but it still needs to be charged. Even if it's only a few ms of extra latency, what's the upside?
This is more idiosyncratic, but I put a Magic Trackpad in the center of the Advantage2 [2] — highly recommended — so losing that center piece is worse for me.
I'm less concerned with the F keys but I'd miss the Esc key in the upper-left, and the printscrn and volume buttons.
I don't put anything in the vast middle space of my advantage2 but I appreciate the single piece design and the physical cable. Not sure if the advantage360 is right for me either.
They do also offer a base Advantage 360 that is wired and the two pieces are connected with a usb-c cable. The downside is it does not have ZMK, but their own smartset firmware.
When the keyboard lets your thumb reach 2-3 buttons each, you get to use the thumb more, which allows using the pinky finger less. (Which is nice, since the pinky finger is weaker than the thumb).
I find it quite nice to use my thumbs for Tab/Esc/Space, Backspace/Enter/Delete.
That said, I'd love a chance to try out the Kinesis 360 and see if loading the thumbs is the comfort boost I didn't know I needed.
First, if you look at the advantage the function keys were membrane and were not good to use. The style of keyboard makes it hard to have a lot depth on the keyboard so it’s safer to just cut the row off now and use layers.
Second, it literally saves you a whole row of mechanical switches which by itself is a large savings in any board.
I use a smaller layout without a number row. I noticed that when I had to use my laptop's keyboard, pressing the ` key was quite annoying since it required either reaching/moving my hand; whereas on a reduced layout, I found it more convenient to not have to move my hand.
I haven't seen anybody do this yet with the 360, but a lot of split-keyboard users chair-mount them: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/xgqp7b/s...
I could see Bluetooth being handy for that.
For many people the aesthetic advantage of not having cords on your desk is more than enough.
I bought a wireless Microsoft ergonomic keyboard a decade ago, with the idea that I could kickback in my chair, with my feet on the desk, and type away with the keyboard in my lap. I've done that maybe five times in the ten years of owning the keyboard. It was not worth the dropped/overly-repeated keypresses over the years (though it was wireless, but not Bluetooth).
I'm looking forward to getting my glove80 in the next month or two, which supports multiple devices via Bluetooth or one device via USB.
The only thing that does it decently is my speaker, but for keyboard and mouse I have a KVM switch (that tries to do something smart with the keyboard that leads to dropped keys, which is also mega annoying).
No cables also means you constantly have to charge. Even if your keyboard lasts a week that means that once a week in the middle of something it just dies.
If you put it on the charger every night, then what was the point of not having cables :/
I hate Bluetooth.
Luckily the base 360 is wired. Though no QMK (and obviously no ZMK), though smartset is pretty ok to. Especially now that they have more than two layers, would love it if they backported that to the Advantage 2.
After using split keyboards for some time, I came up with a setup that only uses 3 rows, and relies on layer switching (mostly using the thumb clusters) to quickly access any keys.
Maybe on a highly curved keyboard like the Kinesis hitting F-keys would be just a matter of bending your fingers more, and not a matter of moving your palm though.
Also, $439 is a very stiff price. I thought my Freestyle Pro at ~$150 was already luxurious.
Heck even three pads per finger is too much imo and I need to devote more research into two pad per finger layouts which rely on multi-pad press combos (stenography) to avoid using the bottom row and pinkies.
Till then you'll probably catch me using MTGAP 30 on an ANSI.
You can still use layers even though there is an extra row of keys so not sure why to remove keys other people rely on.
It’s nice for some people, including me, too have fewer rows of keys because then I have greater confidence in my peripheral vision. Extra rows introduce uncertainty.
Then I picked up a keyboardio atreus. It took me a few weeks to get comfortable with it. But now using layers feels natural- I don’t have to leave the home row!
Having an F5 foot pedal would be fun…
(That said, the Freestyle Pro/Edge is an awesome board for a more traditional layout, especially with the tenting kit.)
But I also specifically want to be able to avoid layers in some situations. I sometimes want to be able to use the keyboard while I'm not in "full-on typing mode".
For example, if one of my hands is busy holding an apple. I would like to be able to change the volume with a single key press, or step the debugger, or refresh the webpage, etc. And that's an absolute pain to do if I need to press multiple keys, especially if the keys I'd need to press would be designed for "one fluid movement", basically requiring two hands. Bonus points for the keyboard being split, so there's no hope for a single hand to reach both keys.
What I'm trying to say is that I see a case for actually having both possibilities on the same keyboard. They don't have to be exclusive. I can have layers and use those when I'm typing, and have them set up for two-handed use. I could use those even if the keyboard had physical Fx and media keys. And for a gigantic and expensive keyboard such as the one discussed here, or any of the similar models, the price difference would be negligible, both cash and size wise.
My solution: use the laptop keyboard for casual button pushing or even casual typing.
That solution works if and only if your computer is a laptop.
I tend to think this is more a matter of preference, so, sure, this keyboard isn't for you.
But what's your experience with layering? Is it "tried it, reached the same typing speed as before, didn't like it", or?
My desk is not space constrained such that an additional physical row or two of keys is going to make my workspace unusable. If I choose to embrace layering and never use the F-keys, fine. However, if I want to only ever utilize 12 keys and do some monstrous chording setup, also an option.
Comparing to the freestyle pro, this advantage360: neither has a numpad.
But the advantage360 also has: symmetrical / not row staggered, more keys for the thumb to reach (rather than just a big spacebar) which allows for reduced pinky finger usage.
I think removing the function row follows coherently in line with these other decisions.
Retail options like the Kinesis and Moonlander are perfectly fine products, but there is also an abundance of (typically open-source) keyboard designs these days:
https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards
Note that anything that runs QMK and Pro Micro MCUs can generally be made wireless using ZMK and nice!nano MCUs.
Be warned that it's a deep rabbit hole. Personally I use and really enjoy the TBK Mini:
I still like building keyboards as a hobby, it’s a lot of fun (but expensive). But none have felt so good so far as the Advantage (which felt great from day one).
I’d love to buy a 360, but the price is a bit steep…
I ended up switching to a moonlander and find it is more enjoyable. I also found it an improvement over the ergodox, because the clusters are more thought out and the tenting has less degrees of freedom so is easier to get just right.
Part of this is just the nature of ergonomic keyboards. Each one is usually solving a set of very specific ergonomic problems. If you don't have that set of problems it can be either a lateral move or even a regression in your comfort/pain level.
My wrists are fucked up from years of skateboarding and mountain biking. Going to curved key wells helped me a lot because it lets me freeze my wrists in a comfortable position and still hit keys far from the home row. And having a fully split keyboard helps me find those comfortable wrist positions easier. With those requirements, a split Dactyl was a good choice and worked out well for me.
1) Split (so the distance is adjustable for your body, depending on your shoulder width)
2) Two axes of adjustable tilt (sides tented down, far side angled down)
3) Palm rests for when not typing
It's shocking to me how many ergonomic keyboards get the first two wrong -- they're not split, and/or the axes aren't adjustable at all or only one is.
This keyboard is split (yay!) but appears to be adjustable only along one axis (boo).
I have found Microsoft Sculpt to be pretty decent. In particular, it has negative tilt which I think is the most ergonomic option. Build quality is not very good, though. And I would prefer a wired option for a lower latency. Also, I have heard they are no longer produced and they are just selling stocked items. Interestingly, I do not dislike their shallow keyswitches. I find them much less tiring in the long run, and I type much faster.
This Advantage360 looks pretty great but I wonder how easy it will be to ship to the UK, when I last looked into these more bespoke keyboards it was a bit of a hassle and increased the price significantly.
It's actually entirely objective, in terms of the amount of tension you need to hold in the muscles connected to your shoulders, elbows, and wrists. You're looking to maintain a neutral position in all of those, to minimize tension there. There's nothing subjective whatsoever about that, tension is very observable.
Second, I would very much push back on key wells for the general population. Adjustable tilt forwards on a flat keyboard achieves everything you need for neutral wrist position and relaxed fingers, so that you're always typing slightly "downwards". Key wells try to accomplish a weird goal of holding your arms/hands in a fixed position and typing with just your fingers, instead of typing with your whole arm floating in an integrated shoulder-to-fingertip movement. If you have some kind of arm movement problem/disability then concave wells might be the best solution, but for the general population the wells are more awkward to use in the upper rows of keys, increasing the forearm tension which controls the fingers. (As a general rule, tension is usually minimized overall by distributing work across as many muscles as possible that involve longer muscle trains, rather than localizing work in shorter areas. That, for example, is why people say to lift with your back, not with your arms.)
I've seen too much advice like yours leading to people with some specific problem going "but I'm doing everything correctly, how am I still experiencing problems?!".
And that's precisely why I wrote that key wells were a bad idea unless you had an injury/disability.
And on the one hand I do want to stress that this is still entirely objective -- it's about actual objective muscle function, it's not subjective opinion. But on the other hand, I can appreciate how frustrating it can be when the advice is geared for people without injury, but presenting it as if it applies to everyone including those with injuries. Sorry if I came across that way. It's just my own frustration with so many quack "ergonomic" products that defend their products which create injuries by suggesting that consumers should just decide for themselves, because the manufacturers are just providing "options".
Anyone wanting to design a keyboard or even just remap an existing one should read John Napier’s excellent book Hands[1].
I'd love bluetooth, but have two separate units in the 360 doesn't really work for me...I guess I could make something like their bridge that's a little more sturdy and adjustable.
Have you considered an Atreus?
I'm designing an extended (i.e. no layers) version of Atreus that's still portable by having some smaller keys, will eventually talk about it more on https://reddit.com/r/ergomobilecomputers
That said, I loved the keyboardio so much that I recently received the updated model 100, and love it more than the original. The hot swappable switches are great, and the layout is really efficient for me (admittedly, took a frustrating few weeks to get proficient).
Knowing what I do now, I'd personally choose the keyboardio 100 over the kinesis 360, but I'm glad there is another flexible high quality split kb on the market.
I don’t really use function keys, but if I did, I’d just map them to the second layer.
I really want one, but I'm not sure, I like resting my palm when typing.
Also, are the wells well curved/deep? I can't tell from static images on the web.
Thanks.
The keyboard is flat, but the caps are sculpted
Wells on the Keyboardio are pretty shallow; nothing like a Kinesis.
(I'm a Model 01 user since 2017 and currently typing this on a Model 100, resting my palms on the wood).
To be honest, no keyboard matches the comfort of my macbook with the keyboard being under the level of the palms.
I also more recently got the keychron K3 (low profile) and realized that the thing I don't like in the KA2 is my wrists being locked.
I think it's not enough to consider a keyboard without a complete setup, including where the hands / arms will rest and where the mouse is positioned.
For example even the distance of my laptop stand makes a huge difference because it affects how far my keyboard can be from my torso, hence whether where my arms rest on the table.
<https://github.com/adereth/dactyl-keyboard>
There is a PCB kit for the Dactyl to reduce the amount of handwiring:
I’m also not a huge fan of having to charge both sides individually although so far the battery life seems quite good. I don’t move my computer often and use a dock so it would be nice to be able to just leave it plugged in without worrying about battery, but doing that requires both sides to each have a cable plugged into a power source.
I think the logic here is subtly wrong. I think it’s pretty likely that Apple thoroughly test their keyboards to make sure Bluetooth works well and that they have low end to end latency. I think most other keyboard makers don’t test these things, even if they claim to be fast. Though Apple also have an advantage from the small travel decreasing time between touching a key and the switch closing, which may be part of the measured latency depending on the methodology
“ During these eleven months of waiting, the customs law here in Turkey changed numerous times. Because the keyboard cost more than 150 euros, I could no longer withdraw it from customs, and I had to arrange a company specialized in importing goods from customs. After some time preparing notarized documents and paying almost %50 of the base price I paid for the Advantage2 360 Pro”
I can understand somewhat the import duties, but why the rigamarole?
The bizarre separation of the arrow keys into left-right and up-down on two different hands was the very first thing I fixed. Now the bottom four keys on my right keywell are left, down, up, right (and I moved the square brackets to the left hand where the left/right were).
(This isn't really ideal because now [] requires a lot of finger travel to type compared to how often I type them. I was excited for the 360 supporting ZMK but I've sworn off bluetooth where it can be avoided, so I'm probably going to just keep my plain-old Advantage until it dies and see if they're "fixed" the 360 line.)
I have sworn by Logitech wireless accessories for years because of their integrated wireless which presents to the OS as a regular USB device driver, so I can use the accessories in BIOS, during OS installations, etc without any hassle.
I also like the Logitech USB dongles because I find the Windows Bluetooth keyboard support to be very much a second class citizen, with slow performance and the keyboad noticeably lags both randomly and when the system is under load, unlike a USB device.
This got me wondering if there was some solution for this, such as having a Bluetooth keyboard communicate with another piece of hardware that replayed the inputs as USB. Or perhaps Windows has upped their game in the couple of years since I last tried a Bluetooth keyboard?
I know on Mac it just works (tm) but sadly I cannot escape Windows at work at the moment.
I did find this DIY solution while hunting for the apparently non-existent real one: https://github.com/houkanshan/arduino-bt-hid-proxy
There's an Arch Wiki page pretending otherwise [0]. I haven't tested it, however, since I think that's a feature. I hate having my computer randomly wake up just because I move the mouse accidentally.
[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bluetooth#Wake_from_suspend
the lack of "]" and "\" keys is a deal-breaker for non-English layouts. The moment you have more letters in the alphabet than 26, you have to readjust your typing habit for the other language.
In the world of fully-custom DIY keyboard that's way too much to compromise on for a high-end keyboard
It's not too outlandish considering the rest of the keyboard, compared to a standard keyboard.
It looks like the Kinesis Advantage 360 is really intended for you to use it with two hands on home row. So, compared to a common layout:
- it's symmetrical & isn't row-staggered,
- lacks the numpad/cursor keys/etc. (which would require your hand moving some distance),
- it lacks a giant spacebar, and instead offers more keys the thumb can reach.
So, many of the design decisions favour hands resting on home row, and getting rid of keys which require moving the hand some distance. -- Dropping the F-keys is in line with this.
For whatever reason, moving my hand across a large keyboard feels... fine. More comfortable than pressing multiple modifier keys.
I made a split keyboard that put the num pad in the middle since that space is normally wasted, but it wasn't very nice to use. Neither of your hands appear from your gut, which is where it would need to be to use the number pad comfortably (and that's why traditional keyboards put off to one side). I just chord to get the number pad keys now.
There are probably keyboards that put the number pad on your left. That might be the perfect match for a right-handed mouse user. (Left-handed mouse users have been happy for decades, I bet.)
I’m all for moving the modifiers but I couldn’t deal with moving of `, =, [, ]
I am not suggesting that you must do this, mind you. Just that you almost certainly could get used to it if you forced yourself to. The benefits of doing so may not be worthwhile, though.
> The Advantage2 was released in 2002
Advantage2 was released in 2016! Original Advantage was in 2002. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesis_(keyboard)
The official adoption of ZMK is a total win.
My reasons for getting HHKB though include sweaty palms, for which very few good keyboards exist that offer relative spill-proofness. I wish more innovation was done in this space, but alas it’s not a huge market.
Bluetooth, function keys, and plastic shine aside, the key question for the 360 is whether tenting, splaying, and adjustable width makes the ergonomics better.
Advantage key wells help maintain a neutral and stable major axis of the wrist (flexion/extension). That's the main cause of carpal tunnel, and a proven benefit.
The 360's tenting, splaying, and adjustable width help
- maintain neutral minor axis of the wrist (radial/ulnar deviation)
- reduce arm tension for wider shoulders and/or more arm muscle tone
- maintain neutral forearm pronation
Unlike key wells, none of these axes are actually in use while keying; they are stable, so they add tension but not overuse. On the other hand, an under-appreciated benefit of splitting and tenting is that they reduce your ability to lean on the keyboard to compensate for posture issues, and may reduce the tendency to hit keys hard.
So feature-wide, the split/tented design has ergonomic promise, but might not be a significant benefit if you have good form with the Advantage. So yes, it is worth trying on feature grounds.
The gestalt is a bit more like your take on engineering complexity, and whether additional degrees of freedom are optimizing or confusing. Either way, it depends on your ergonomic profile: necessity or desire.
I started with necessity: RSI makes you exquisitely sensitive to excess tension and movement. But soon it became desire: I found that I can think more clearly, and feel much more fresh after a long day, when keyboarding is effortless -- if I need no more focus on typing than I do on my tongue when speaking.
Like a marriage (or Steve Job's rock tumbler?), getting to effortless requires endless work chipping away even tiny sharp edges; observing your muscle tension, noticing what key combinations are usable and memorable. Building touch typing fluency, including syntax and commands for multiple applications, into muscle memory. It's much closer to engineering backends at internet scale than prototyping on rails for 300 clients. You may even find that smoothing your own ergonomics makes you happier and more vested in a long-term approach.
I have an Advantage2 with a magic trackpad in the middle (like maximilianroos), and a tilted tray with raised platform for mice. I've used the Kinesis deep-well split keyboards for ~24 years, and would pay 5X the price if I had to. The company has fantastic support and now is battling a flurry of pop-up product managers offshoring me-too design and manufacturing. High-end keyboards are a small market, and I wonder how long Kinesis will last.
The 360 is mostly unobtainium. They sold out in hours, crashed the website, and only now (months later) announced another limited tranch available via third parties.
If the 360 is interesting and you don't have an Advantage, consider the Advantage2. Give yourself a 2-4 (exclusive) weeks, to the point where you can touch-type and forget about the keyboard. By then you'll either be on board with continuous improvement or not, and the 360 will be just another increment to try.