How did I get here?

Not to long ago I went all in on the fad that is custom keyboards. I bought myself a Keychron Q1 Pro and modded it a bit for some better sound and feel. It really became an awesome typing experience.

At the moment I am also studying part time besided my fulltime job so I am typing more than ever and I believe this is what has led me to have wrist pain. At first I thought it might have been the switches I put in the keyboard, so I changed back to stock gateron browns as they have a lower actuation force than the glorious panda switches, but little did it help.

Strangely enough I experienced the pain primarily in my right hand going from my forearm all the way through my wrist and out into my little and ring fingers. It’s more common for people to experience RSI like symptoms in their left hand first as the bulk of words are typed mainly with your left hand on a QWERTY layout.

As I analyzed my typing style a bit it quickly became obvious that I would twist my right wrist a lot to hit backspace, enter etc.

Split it down the middle.

A standard keyboard as most people love are not designed for humans in the first place and as a bigger guy the problem just gets worse for me. Ulnar deviation gets more pronounced the wider.

As I came to think about this I’t became obvious what benefits a split keyboard would have and I researched a LOT of keybaords. When researching split keyboards you will inevitably come acrosss ergonomic keyboards in general and thats a gigantic rabbit hole to dive into.

So what started with me looking for a split keyboard quickly became so much more I never even thought about. Ergonomic keyboards are quite expensive so I didn’t want to go to 10 more boards to find something that would solve my pain.

Split and then some…

After some reading it became obvious that more things could be done other than splitting the keyboard. Ortholiniar and column stagger being some of the popular ones that also made a lot of sense. The row staggered layout you got from a conventional keyboard is focused on solving typewriter issues not human ones it makes no sense on a modern digital keyboard to make those ergonomic compromises.

Columnstaggered seemed like the most ergonomic solution to me as the individual key columns was aligned relative to the length of the finger using that column. As I started looking into column staggered split keyboards keywell keyboards popped up, and I could see the appeal.

I really enjoyed modding my KeyChron board and from my research I understood that keywell boards could not be produced with hotswap sockets so the only way to change switched is to resolder - and I can’t to that… yet.

Now I was at a crossroads boards like the dygma defy looked appealing but it’a a really expensive board to get that I wasn’t sure solved my issues. In the end I decided to go all in on ergonomics instead of style and modability.

My wishlist for the new keyboard then became: split, column stagger and key well. This narrowed the field down quite a bit to 3 potential candidates for me; the kinesis advantage 360, dactyl manuform and glove80.

The kinesis thumbcluster seemed like it would be hard to use properly and the board is really expensive and the wireless capabilities did get a lot of criticism online.

The dactyl manuform was interesting as you could get it tailored specifically to your hands dimensions. This came at the cost of it being a 3d printed board wich means the build quality is a little flimsy and people reported it felt like it would easily break. From the images I’ve seen of the board it would also need a palm rest since the board is quite high of the table.

Now the glove80 everyone and their mother was praising to the moon and naturally that really peaked my interests. Ergonomically there is nothing like it on the market today, but it looks and feels a little cheap imo. The housing is plastic and the board is very light - this is by choice as MoErgo set out to make the most ergonomic and portable board possible. And I believe they succeded in that regard.

The glove80

I ordered my glove80 with red linear switches and waited eagerly on the delivery from china… When it arrived I quickly took it for a spin ready to spew out code at an never before seen rate only to find myself having gone from around 80-90 words per minute to around 5. That was rough!

Luckily I kept at it and here I am a little month later I am around 60 wpm wich is not as quick as I used to be but I am pain free. Apart from the keyboard switch I also started utilizing layers for symbols and numpad, home row mods for modifier keys and other fancy keyboard programmable stuff like a capsword button. And getting used to all those does take a while so to me I sacrificed a bit of speed for better ergonomics and it was all worth it.

I would love a glove80 focused on build quality being a bit sturdier with better sound etc. but there is noting that beats it when it comes to ergonomics and the ZMK firmware is very good for programmability. Even though I would like “better” materials in a glove80 the plastics used is of a very high quality. The board is neither bending of flimsy in any way - It’s very solid and the plastics are nice to touch.

I do feel like the sound is a little to plastic and pingy to my taste so I opened the board and filled it up with tape and Dynamat Extreme wich helped a lot. But as the board is very thin there proved to be little room and actully had some issues with the Dynamat product being conductive and activated some of the key switches when I assembled the board again. I managed to make it work and it did improve the sound a bit while also adding a littel weight wich to me makes it feel a bit more premium.

I am thinking of trying to make the switch to another layout like Colemak DH and the ZSA Voyager looks like a really interesting keyboard…. It never ends….

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