Hi, I hope it’s okay to ask for recommendations on this sub, if not please just delete my post, or lock it down.
So back to the topic, I came here to ask if anyone could recommend me keyboard. I’m a software dev working 100% from home, therefore the keyboard I’m looking for is mainly used for work related stuff. Outside of work I’ll also mainly do browsing, some office stuff and a bit of leisure coding. Gaming is (sadly) nothing I’m doing anymore beside maybe the single day once a year were I’m playing a few hours of factorio or something alike.
Currently I’m mainly using a Logitech MX Keys since my girlfriend got stressed by the sound of my beloved Corsair K70 with blue clicky switches. Since she’s not working from home anymore I’m able to go back to a mechanical keyboard. I would like to switch to one of those fancy split keyboard things since their ergonomics actually seems to be way better then the one of a classical keyboard. I’d also like it to be wireless since I reorganized my desk and actually managed to get a nice cable free desk. Thing is, when I was looking around I found some wireless ergonomic keyboards but most of them were no real split keyboards and almost all of them had rubber domes and no mechanical switches. The mechanical ones I found were all cabled bound and for some reason also incredibly expansive. E.g. I’d really liked the Moonlander thing but it’s already at close to 400 euros, I also liked the ultimate hacking keyboard even more, since one is able to attach a small trackball to it but it’s also cable bound and incl. vat and shipping to Germany it’s above 600 euros…
So to sum it up, I’d be really thankful if anyone of you has some suggestion for a nice mechanical wireless split keyboard.
Thanks
Not sure of your budget or thoughts on some DIY. If you don’t have the time to game, you might not have time to solder… In that case I’d recommend looking at options from Kinesis: https://kinesis-ergo.com/products/#keyboards
You can also look through here (https://golem.hu/boards/) for some diy options if you’d prefer that route. Kukkurovaca had a much more detailed explanation. (Hi Kukkurovaca, cool to see you here instead of on discord!)
Hey! 👋 I was getting stressed out on discord by being in too many discords, so I declared temporary discord bankruptcy on everything but like one group chat. Once my brain has cooled down I will get back into it.
Would feel weird to spend more then 150euros on a keyboard since I never put that much value on peripherals but if it’s worth it it would be an option. Thanks for the golem link. Will also check it out tomorrow. The more I think about some DIY stuff the more I begin to like it but maybe I should check use some time tomorrow to check out how much work there actually is to do before starting another project that might take forever to finish.
There’s a spectrum of DIY to it. Boards with an integrated MCU may only require that you solder switches. Switch soldering is quite forgiving and I’d say pretty fun. There are some people who hate soldering but still like custom boards, so they will use a soldering service (unfortunately, usually found via word of mouth or places like mechmarket). If you wanted a cheap kit with lots of soldering and you’re in the EU, I’d look at https://42keebs.eu/products/kits/
They have a couple of splits available. A lot depends also on how many keys you’re looking to have. The wonderful world of layers and combos has a learning curve but there’s plenty of programmers who use very small boards on a daily basis. ZMK might be fun for you if you do coding on the side as well as for work.
Feel free to send a DM if you have specific questions, I’m getting a bit long here.
Hah, that reminded me I want to investigate foot pedals.
Hello internet stranger, do you know if the Kinesis are hot swappable? They do not mention either way on their product discriptions.
Based on descriptions on their website it looks like they aren’t… Maybe it’d be possible to desolder one and put on new switches yourself, but that’s a lot of work and if you don’t have the gear/experience for it it can be frustrating or destructive.
There is a custom service listed with a whole lot of choice. I’ve found over time I value hotswap less, both as I get to know what switches I like and also because hotswap can cause decision fatigue. If my switches are soldered in I feel more secure in not thinking about changing them.
Of course now I just get more boards instead oh no help
I hopped around different ergo boards for about a year before settling on a Mistel MD770, which has been going strong for nearly 3 years. Basically a standard tenkeyless board just chopped in half. Not too many bells and whistles, but I find I don’t really care about that. Relatively cheap at ~$200 USD and no soldering needed. It just works out of the box. :-)
For me, a split + slight interior tilt was all I needed to get fully comfy. Tenting, ortholinear, columnar, dvorak etc were a pain to learn or just superfluous.
I too would be interested if anyone has a wireless split keyboard recommendation because I’ve never seen one that interested me. I have the Quefrency by Keebio (https://keeb.io/) and really like it, but it’s wired…
Most ergo split boards are DIY builds. They’re cheap, but they require you to do a fair bit of soldering. (Usually including diodes and controllers.)
Many ergo boards are built around the pro micro pinout, and this means that they can generally be made into wireless builds using nice!nano controllers, batteries, and ZMK firmware.
Theoretically any pro micro based board can be made wireless like this, but the experience will be a bit better if the PCB supports battery on/off switches. This is especially true if you ever need to transport the board, because ZMK has no way to turn the board off electronically or put it into a soft lockout mode.
I really like the Kyria, personally, but ergo board layout preferences are very personal. You can compare layouts here: https://compare.splitkb.com/
Actually I didn’t consider soldering it myself since I just assumed all those kit things aren’t wireless. It has been a few years since I soldered something but I’m confident I would be able to get a keyboard done. Would actually be really nice to have a self soldered keyboard, the IKEA effect is usually strong on me. Anyway, thank you so much for the link, I bookmarked it and will check it out in the morning and see if there is some layout appealing to me.
My go to is always lily58 pro, but that’s going to be a DIY build. On the flip side, you’ll have way more customization options (eg. Switches that are not too loud).
Honestly, even with the price, the moonlander has been a wonderful keyboard. It was my first big keeb purchase after gonna of research. The free and easy rebinding of the keys at a moments notice has allowed me to remain productive whether I am coding, writing documentation, or writing emails. It took an adjustment period being my first split board, but I now have a layout I like. For example, many of the existing layouts do minimal with F1-F12, but I need them daily.
During the day I found myself wanting some keys moved around. I was able to reflash my keyboard with the changes, even setting up macros, in a minute or two. To add to this, hotswappable switches let’s you really customize the board after you get it, should you want a different feel.
Although it isn’t wireless, you don’t really notice that it is wired. Both included cables can be swapped out of you want a different look, but they are both long enough to be comfortable.
If you can spare the expense or save up for it, it’s definitely worth the investment.
The moonlander does look really nice and fancy if it would be wireless I think I might have bought it just because of the fancy looks (might not have been the smartest move given it’s price). But anyway, the wireless thing is like a really hard requirement for me at the moment. It’s partly about having a clean desk but also even more so about not having to move cables around from one laptop to another multiple times per day. The MX Key just connects automagically to whatever laptop I’m using and I’d like to have that as well with whatever new keyboard I’ll be buying myself in the future.
Unfortunately, I am still relatively new to the hoby and don’t have any wireless keebs to recommend. But I am also always using it at a desktop. Good luck in the search though!
