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Comment by matthewtse | Hacker News Reader

I haven't been following ergonomic keyboards for awhile, but went pretty deep a few years ago back when the Dactyl Manuform and Kinesis were the only names in town.

So seeing the Glove80, I was excited to see a new "mass-manufactured" entrant in the space, since dactyl manuforms have to be 3d-printed and handwired, thus meaning they're hard to come by and quite expensive.

The glove80 looks interesting, however at $400 it's not much cheaper than handmade dactyls (https://bastardkb.com/product/scylla-prebuilt-preorder-2/). So if I were purchasing another one, I'd probably still go for a dactyl, as there's more community history/support, and hand-built build quality might be higher.

If an injection molded + flexible PCB mass manufacturer for these curved keywell ergonomic keyboards could release something for around $200, then the space might really heat up!

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I think one of the issues is that the key wells need to hand soldered, which increases the cost per unit.

You can find well-priced Glove80s sometimes. I was particularly lucky and found one for 150 Euro. But for the other, the 360 Euro was well spent!

At any rate, people spend thousands on a MacBook, but for a product that probably lasts longer and might save your job long-term, we suddenly practice extreme austerity. When I had my brush with wrist pain, I realized that the money spent on a good keyboard, chair, and desk is nothing compared to the income lost if I can’t work until I’m retiring.

I hand-wired and hand-soldered two of them myself (back before you could buy them as easily). I was hoping flexible PCBs (https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/qbw7i4/o...) would make the hand-wiring part much less labor intensive.

Did it?

Already soldered 2 dactyl manuforms (one for home and one for work), not going to solder another one until one breaks :)

Though honestly if it broke, I'd probably just pay for the next one, not worth the labor (literally hundreds of solder points and hand wiring over like 30 hours). I did it mostly to learn about soldering/electronics and thought it would be fun.

The careful hand wiring is the laborious part, which the flexible PCB seems to solve. So I'd imagine it would take a 30 hour task down to 2 hours?

I have it. The community is active in Discord. They also have a section for buying/selling Glove80's from users and getting mods done. The firmware is ZMK and lots of configuration options. I was glad to have bought this over any Dactyl. The physical key layout is amazing. The Red Pro switches even better than I expected coming from C MX Reds. The low profile is also great and I prefer it over standard height keys. It met my expectation. Checkout Ben Frain on YouTube since he has the Glove80, Moonlander, Kinesis Advantage 360 and a Dactyl. A customized to your hand Dactyl w/ low profile low force linear switches would be enticing.

Dactyl thumb cluster is not good. Glove80 nailed it and the community is very supportive.

I have a Scylla and a Skeletyl from BastardKb (the site linked above). The Skeletyl is a 3x5 keyboard with three thumb keys each hand, and I love the thumb clusters on it. Works perfectly with Miryoku and each key is very comfortable to press.

I'm pretty happy with mine, looks like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/p282ee... I like how the thumb buttons splay across the way you rotate the thumb, so you don't need to stretch/contract the thumb, which is awkward.

What do you like about your Glove80 thumb cluster?

My thumb rests at close to neutral position on Glove80 as well, at least compared with Advantage. I like that I can press thumb keys more by moving my arm slightly without having to contract my thumb tendons whereas Dactyl is more of a claw grip.

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