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Comment by rhcom2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm still surprised by the price of some of these split keyboards. I guess it's just small batch size but $400 is steep.

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You can buy them on Aliexpress for $100-150 fully assembled or < $50 pcbs for soldering.

I bought they keychron Q11 because it was cheaper and it is way higher quality than I expected. It's a fantastic split keyboard.

That is pretty cheap in the long run.

But when I can buy a "good enough" Dell keyboard for $30, over 10x the cost for splitting the PCB in half sure smells like a rip off.

Does it? The "good enough" Dell keyboard is made by a multi-billion dollar corporation in extremely large quantities. Economies of scale bring the price all the way down, and they skimp on parts (e.g. no real mechanical keys).

The cost isn't in "splitting the PCB in half", it's in designing and connecting two halves. In sourcing (usually) high quality mechanical keys. Due to the small batch sizes there's also a good chance these are installed by hand, which is pretty labour intensive. Labour ain't cheap.

I work for a U.S. company that makes ergonomic 3D printed keyboards. We design specifically for the individual user's hand. Almost all the keyboard shells (the 3d files) are designed custom for the individual.

Labor is pretty cheap. It takes on average about 2 hours to build a keyboard. If there are no issues, it takes 1 hour. That costs about $25 total on average for labor.

The main cost is the 3d printed shells. We print PLA ourselves for cheap, but we outsource Nylon and Resin to China. These can cost anywhere from $150 to $200 for the entire thing.

The next highest cost are the PCBs. Our connectors, PCB columns for the switches, trackball PCBs, and the "brain" PCB, where all the logic processing happens, end up costing over $100-$150 total.

The total cost to build them ends up being anywhere from $250 (the absolute minimum barebones keyboard) to $400 for higher end boards.

Just some insight.

Maybe. If a $30 keyboard works for you that's great. They drive me crazy.

My take is that ergonomics are personal. Split keyboards work for me.

If your body is complaining, don't ignore it. Take actions. Split keyboard might be one action that helps.

I get what you mean, but that is assuming that you know exactly which one to get and you only need to buy one. In reality, you'll probably need to try at least 3-4 keyboards to find the right one, and they're not always easy or cost-free to return since they're often only available on specialty sites or kickstarters.

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