Their website won't load, but it looks like they've been working on a prototype of a keyboard that has e-ink displays on each switch since around 2016.
This has been attempted before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard but with LCDs (or maybe they were OLEDs, since all the reviewers complain about burn-in). The reviews were overwhelmingly negative and you can pick one up cheap used because nobody wants them.
Overall, I find these designs awfully expensive on many fronts. Looking at the keyboard is a huge productivity sink, and if you stop looking at the keyboard, you won't care what the legends look like. And, having 101 screens attached to your keyboard is pretty costly compared to having 0 screens. I think these make for a good conversation piece, but I'm not sure you'd prefer typing on them to a keyboard with a better layout and better switches. And if you want a macro pad, just get a stream deck, which you can buy with same-day shipping instead of crowdfunding it. (Or just build your own. There are tons of kits out there that cost on the order of $10. No per-key screens though.)
If you have deeply-nested layers, having some way to identify what state your keyboard is in can be helpful. Having screens instead of LEDs is definitely an expensive luxury, though.
True. Personally I have 3 LEDs on my keyboard that I use to show the current layer (in binary). I then carefully numbered my layers so that I use 0, 1, 2, and 4 in preference to others ;)
That’s an interesting idea, actually. A keyboard that could visually identify state might be useful for education: say a typing or Vim tutor. It’d be kind of nifty if a key started flashing so that you could identify its location (for learning a layout), or had a little icon suggesting “insert” or whatever command it triggers. T’would be an expensive teaching tool, though.
My optimal keyboard would have: mechanical switches, per-key RGB LEDs, MX keycaps with translucent borders to see the LED lights ("pudding" style), per-key legends that would change with the keyboard language and layers.
I only want to be able to look at the keyboard when I'm not familiar with the layout, but I want to be able to do that.
I am just not convinced that an O(n) visual scan over the keyboard is that useful. What programs really need is a good "search" function for commands. Obviously scanning over an entire toolbar is useless, but if you can search named commands and the application shows you where in the menu the command is and what its shortcut is, then that would be better than a keyboard that just puts toolbar icons on the keys.
(I have used variants of this feature in many applications and love it. There are a bunch of functions in Fusion 360 whose name I know, but not where in the menus it is. But they have a search-and-invoke UI, so I can run them. I do wish it would show me where in the menus they are, though, because after the first couple times it sure is inefficient.)
> having 101 screens attached to your keyboard is pretty costly
I wonder if it would be somehow feasible to cut costs by using a projection scheme.
Perhaps each key could be essentially passive rear projector screen, then you'd have a system of mirrors, lenses, prisms, or whatever below the keys so that one DLP or other projection system could hit all the keys.
Maybe having 1 active component and 101 passive components (hopefully all plastic) would make the whole thing a lot cheaper.
Of course, there would be the small matter of building it so the geometry works out where you can have the image hit the key and also have a switch and spring beneath it.
I'm one of the founders, the first unit used a prototype EPD from E Ink Holdings, a custom display with around $500k in NRE was developed for a Macbook size keyboard module.
This single large display with a magnetic mechanism operating around the footprint meant the total unit cost in COGS was significantly lower than $100USD at scale.
The entire mechanism was only a few mm in height including the display. The travel and tactile profile was designed to a butterfly switch mechanism spec.
Your keyboard is neat, but I just don't think it's for me. If you've ever looked through menus for some command, you know that it never feels good. Looking down at your keyboard and doing the same visual search would feel just as bad.
If I were spending on keyboard research and development, I'd want a silent design that feels as tactile as buckling spring switches. That would benefit me (and anyone nearby) every time I press a key, which is thousands of time per day. A display on each key? Neat, but that's about it.
The Mini 3 was basically the original demo of the concept.
The studio then released the full-size Maximus for $2068 using an OLED per key.
They later released the Popularis, originally intended as a cheaper sub-$1000 model using a single large OLED for all keys. They did end up releasing it but with various additional tradeoffs (a "compact" keyboard without a numpad) and at a fairly expensive $1086.
Concurrently, they released cut-down keypads with 6 and 15 keys, also at fairly expensive $376 and $534.
the website doesn't even work for me but I looked up some images, and even if this thing actually exists and isn't vaporware, it looks like a truly bad keyboard.
All the things that actually matter in a keyboard (key feel, travel, ergonomics) are all things this design gets dead wrong. It seems mostly modelled after the apple mac keyboard (which has awful key feel and even worse ergonomics) and to be incredibly short-travel. The design also seems to have no respect at all for any ergonomics improvements made to keyboards in the past 20 years.
Also, anybody buying a high-end keyboard will probably be able to touch type anyway, so what is the point of this product even? When you're using a computer, you're looking at your display, not your keyboard.
It's really unfortunate to see how tightly product designers hold on to the traditional staggered-typewriter layout.
People tend to believe that more esoteric designs won't sell, but the $300+ model01 I'm typing this comment with begs to differ. It seems to me like they are targeting the wrong market.
Sofle looks nice. I really like the idea of having dials on-board.
The only thing I would miss is the thumb-cluster design of the Model01. Having thumb keys a little farther to the side, and having a thumb-knuckle key is really comfortable.
The extra portability of the lily58/sofle design would be nice, though.
It's meant for Mac users, not "Keyboard Nerds". I can't imagine there's a market. Mac users want to use a proper Apple product. They'd still use the hockey-puck mouse if Apple still bundled them with the iMac.
Yeah, I felt saddened to see the command, ctrl, alt keys were not programmable.
I get people wanting to design only for the apple devices, but frankly I find lately that I enjoy less branding on my devices/clothing/etc in general, and that includes the windows keys on my laptops.
I'm one of the founders. The site crashed due to the traffic, we sold the technology, IP and some of the key talent joined Foxconn late last year; and scaled back our servers during the transition.
I'm a keyboard enthusiast, it started with an IMB model M and that's how the original prototypes started. The feedback regarding adopting Apple design and ergonomics was a reflection that our main strategic partner, investor, and eventually owner was Foxconn, and the customers we engaged with were B2B and set the spec.
For our Macbook projects, it was specifically a Butterfly switch spec we have to match in performance and design. I'd have loved to create a product aligned to what you're referring to, but strategically we have to achieve a MOQ of displays to be economically feasible, and our cooperation with Apple was easier to secure the 300k of displays required than trying to tackle the B2C premium keyboard consumer market.
What's the point of Eink on a keyboard? Anyone stare at their keyboard for hours at a time?
Isn't Eink is supposed to help you read without screen fatigue?
Some people know several languages, but it's difficult to learn a locale well enough to 100% touch type when you only have a keyboard in a single locale, and don't use some of the languages as often as others.
Also, per-software layers with action icons instead of learning alphabetic shortcuts.
It's also difficult to know all alternate layouts by heart e.g. Apple's US International has 4 different layout (shifted, alted and alt-shifted), and while being able to type "°" directly can be convenient I literally never remember it's alt-k, so I hunt through basically all the alt-ed layout until I find it.
Original IBM PC users may remember a program from 1983 called WordVision that came with keyboard stickers. There's a picture of the sticker sheet here:
It was an idea that really only worked if WordVision was the only app you used on the PC. Plus the stickers got dirty around the edges and came loose after a while.
Fun fact: WordVision was designed by Jim Edlin, no relation to the 'edlin' command line text editor that shipped with MS-DOS and PC-DOS.
And here I was hoping it was a normal keyboard, with eink key caps. Instead it's what looks like the worst possible design for implementing a solidly obvious idea.
(I still don't know why people tried this with LED screen keycaps instead of doing eink first, and then were surprised a $250, one-trick keyboard didn't fly off the shelves)
Eink used to be expensive, have slow refresh rates, and no color. OLED screens on the other hand have vibrant colors and can show videos. The concept of OLED keycaps is still superior, but it needs to be realized much better and much cheaper to be a top seller.
The problem is that unlike a phone or a tv these will probably be on for the whole workday, so 8h+ with little change to what is displayed and probably at a high contrast. The burn in will probably be an issue.
What burn-in? E-ink is a passive technology, it's not "on" like liquid crystals that have to constantly be pulled into a specific configuration by applying fresh charge, and will settle in that configuration over time as they find the lowest energy state amongst themselves that then has to be overcome with a higher charge.
The form factor of this and the Apple Magic keyboard are just an ergonomic nightmare.
I have a strong preference for natural / split keyboards, but I'm perfectly content with typing on normal keyboards if that's all that is available. It might take me weeks or months of typing on a standard keyboard before I start to get the aches going in my wrists. I lasted barely half a day with a 2015/2016 era Magic keyboard before my wrists started hurting like sweet merry hell. It's far too cramped, forcing the wrists and arms at weird angles, even with the keyboard out at full arm's length. (I find the Magic Mouse to be similarly absurd from an ergonomic perspective. Shape was fine, but having to arch a finger to use it is crazy, and similarly bad for RSI)
I was really curious to see what the offering was here, but, ignoring price, this is just such a terrible, gimmicky choice of form factor. They immediately eliminate a sizeable potential market by choosing this one.
What would a "normal keyboard with eink key caps" imply? Like, a mechanical one? You'd still have to wire up power and data to each key-cap, which doesn't seem like it'd be a simple modification. And the lower movement distance of this format would make [whatever] simpler and last longer too.
I'm one of the founders, E Ink displays have their display drivers on their glass substrate, meaning you would have a border that on a single key display would be too significant. We went with one large display with only one driving board for the entirety of the keys. This greatly reduced the unit cost to have one large EPD than 80+ small ones.
And in the process designed a keyboard that is probably a little worse than apple's execution on this ergonomic nightmare. The challenge in this space was to make a real keyboard - sure, that'd involve overcoming the "how do we get the wires from the board through the switch to the keycap", starting with off the shelf switches and caps (because it's okay to not offer people the choice to replace their own keys when you make something like this) because as you say, it would be way harder (and far more costly) to make individual keys be self-contained e-ink units.
This whole thing sounds like scam. I don't think this keyboard is possible to make at $199. Every piece of eink display under the cap costs a few bucks. Then you need insane custom switching board to multiplex all these displays with SPI lines. Probably needs an FPGA to do it fast and reliably. The raw BOM cost alone will be $100 or more.
Fabbing a custom size eink display will cost $200K in tooling + R&D if only they could find a fab that is willing to do sub 100k MOQ orders. Otherwise, it is upwards of $500k. The thing is, no other customer will ever buy a 12x12mm eink display since it is too small to do anything useful, so the eink display manf cannot ammortize the cost of a new line spin up and tooling. It has to be captured and it will be costly.
based on similar products that use LCDs, it won't have 60+ displays, it will use a single large display, and the switches will basically activate a touch screen.
> This whole thing sounds like scam. I don't think this keyboard is possible to make at $199. Every piece of eink display under the cap costs a few bucks.
It would most likely have a single large display, like the Optimus Popularis. Uglier and less convenient, but way the hell cheaper.
I'd guess low demand as well. Compared to any other type of screen, eInk is extremely niche. E-Readers and some mass produced wearables (Pebble) made it work, but even those had a fairly small market.
I'm one of the founders, I exited after the acquisition and now work in VC.
It's absolutely possible, the custom EPD was $40USD, we used injection molder keys, and a delrin keyframe. The remaining components for the display timing controller and the keyboard controller were dollars each at scale (excluding the TCM chip which was relatively expensive).
The entire BOM cost of goods was far under $100, and was comparable to a Macbook butterfly switch keyboard module.
The entire design with Foxconn / it's customers was specifically for MOQ's of 300k units. We did beta units to 40+ countries.
The NRE for the display was also double your estimate and took around 9+ months to get finished + a few months of delays due to terrible yields on the first Mass produced units.
I see lots of people commenting that this sort of keyboard is a gimmick because it's a waste of time to look at keys while you type. As a programmer, I get that logic. But there are times when I would 100% love a keyboard that could allow me to use different key layouts and visually see the layout. The first use-case for me is when switching language layouts. I'm tri-lingual and use different keyboard layouts to be able to type characters in other languages. But every time I switch languages, I forget where the punctuation and other symbol keys have moved to. It's a pain in the ass to have to switch layouts just because I can't remember where a question mark or a curly bracket is in the language I'm using. Second, occasionally do design and video editing on the side. Not often enough to memorize keyboard shortcuts like I do with programming. But especially with video editing, if you're not using keyboard shortcuts and hunting through menus instead, the work is extremely slowed down. Lastly, games. I game from time to time, but each game I play has different controls mapped to the keyboard. I can't usually remember more than 4 or 5 controls for the duration of a gaming session, so being able to see what's what would make my gaming experience much more enjoyable.
All that being said, I'm not holding my breath for this keyboard. The design isn't polished enough, I doubt software support for my use cases will be common any time soon, and I just don't see hundreds of little screens being cost effective or reliable hardware. I hope I'm wrong though.
This is what the Macbook touchbar is for (with, granted, no tactility). And, to put it mildly, it divides opinion. I really miss my muscle memory for media keys on my mac.
The problem of the touchbar is that it has no tactile feeling and literally no allowance for muscle memory. It lets you see what mode your in, but it also requires that you look at it.
Well, exactly—this is what Apple was going for with the touchbar, except that Apple neglected to complete the circle. Apple expected users to give up tactility in exchange for contextual information; in reality, most laptop users were unhappy with the trade.
If the touchbar had the same haptic feedback the trackpad has, it'd be awesome.
When people are told the trackpad doesn't move when it's pressed - that it isn't "clicking" in the sense you are not pressing a switch - the first reaction is incredulity.
Having a 15" and a 16" (work and personal), I can tell you it's night and day on the 16" with a physical esc key and good keyboard. I haven't once wanted to hurl the 16" into the sea :)
I hate the touchbar. I am a professional programmer and need all the keys I can get. The touchbar removed a number of keys that I used with Emacs, and in return I get little tiny picture that I have to look at before using. Right now the Touch Bar is mostly showing the three words that my Mac thinks I might be typing next based on the prefix that I've already typed. Really? Does it think that after typing D followed by o as I start this sentence that I want to look at the touchbar to see it's guesses and then press 'Does' to save typing the e key followed by the s key. Its a totally stupid feature on a keyboard for people that know how to type.
i wonder if it has more utility if the suggestions were restricted to words longer than, say, 6 letters, where spelling confusion might slow down typing enough to make the tradeoff?
I have always wished Apple would have simply replaced the top row of keys with addressable and configurable LCD or eInk keycaps. Maybe even combine the rightmost 3-4 keys into a smaller slideable touchbar.
With the 2019 refresh I thought they might do that as a compromise.
We could have all had whatever keys we want. Revolutionary. Instead, nope.
Don't know which module they are using, but you won't get partial refresh timers faster than 0.3 seconds, and full refresh timers faster than 2 seconds.
You can just launch on screen keyboard or search for an image of your keyboard layout. The shortcuts info would be a bit more useful but the keyboard needs to support it on the first place
Totally agree. I’m used to typing Hebrew and lately Arabic blindly on a USA keyboard but sometimes I get stuck and it helps to have a quick look. Problem is I’m mostly in Emacs and with its very own inputs it’s not going to help much, unless it’s programmable...
This. I want to write texts on a German keyboard and code on an American one. I've put "alt gr" on caps lock, which kinda makes the pain of 3rd layer curly braces bearable, but every time I reinstall my machine I need to figure out where to set this up. 80% of the time I get the wrong angle bracket. Custom layout keyboard could also keep Z and Y in either place.
I'm one of the Founders at Sonder.
We found from our test units that uses can work up to 30% faster with dynamic keyboards and had strong responses particularly from developers.
The company, the intellectual property and some of the key talent was acquired by Foxconn, the current design is quite polished, as is the user interface.
In regards to the cost point, it's one large display is a magnet mechanism operating within the periphery. This greatly reduced the unit cost and complexity of the design so it was scalable and comparable in price to an existing laptop keyboard module (when supply chain costs and keyboard layout revenue factored in).
I do that (via termux) with a onyx max boox 3. Works pretty well. I had some quality issues (got 2 dead lines on 2 devices so far) with the actual device but support has been very, very supportive so far so globally I'm very happy
Great, finally programming languages can expect even beginners to keep typing characters like ? with little difficulty. Your editor plugin will also include keyboard customization.
Does anyone remember the Samsung Alias 2? It was a dual-hinge flip phone with e-ink keys. When you flipped it open in portrait mode, the keys would display a number pad, and if you opened it in landscape mode the key labels changed to a QWERTY layout.
I had both the Alias and Alias 2. I absolutely loved the Alias because it was so great for texting. The Alias 2 was a cool idea but I felt that the e-ink key refresh was too slow and the keys were mushy.
I'd love a full travel keyboard. I'm not sure "Keyboard Enthusiasts" want a Mac style keyboard.
While I don't often need to look at keys when doing normal typing, I still do when programming APL. And I never remember the keys when using After Effects / Premiere. Having programmable caps would be nice.
Great concept but to me does not make that much sense. Because there are no extra keys. So what is the point of having re-programmable keys if you’ll have to reprogram the keys that you are already using? Function keys are not so useful as they are too far away from main typing area (at least for me). An extra vertical row of keys on the left however would be great. I would order such a keyboard. (Currently I am using an International English one and there’s an extra key, § which I re-programmed with different modifiers for several functions. A whole row of extra keys would be just amazing!)
Professional applications, e.g. video nonlinear editing, have a huge number of shortcut keys. You can buy entire keyboards with colored key caps that are labeled with shortcuts for a single application like Final Cut Pro.
Apparently there’s some debate whether or not this is a real product, but if it is, I’d love this in a compact keyboard form like a Kyria, Lily58, or Corne. Those keyboards are less than 60 keys so they require layers to get at what doesn’t fit on the default layout.
This sounds like a hassle but ergonomically it’s very good! Your fingers travel and stretch less this way. Someone asked me if I type as fast or faster with my Ergodox. I told them I don’t measure but that’s not even the biggest feature, but the fact that I’m not moving my whole hand up to the number row for digits and symbols.
The downside to this is that layers are deeply personal and changing them can bring some friction as a user re-learns the layout. I’ve resorted to screenshotting and printing my layers at times when I try a new paradigm. Having dynamic key labels would be a godsend for this sort of keyboard-user relationship.
> Those keyboards are less than 60 keys so they require layers to get at what doesn’t fit on the default layout.
This is the one reason that has kept me from switching to an ergodox/keyboard.io/… keyboard. I want as many keys as possible, not fewer! For instance, I would never buy a keyboard without a proper row of function keys. I'm already finding it hard to decide what to bind them to because there are so many things I use and need on a regular basis…
> This sounds like a hassle but ergonomically it’s very good!
It's not. The fewer keys you have, the more you'll be inclined to resort to key combinations for your window manager / editor / … and these are generally bad from an ergonomic point of view. Even with multiple key board layers or modal editing, you still have to press far more keys to get done what on a larger keyboard would take you one single key stroke.
Hard disagree on the smaller keyboards being less ergonomic, at least from anecdata. Plus even with something as simple as a Corne, that’s 108 keys with a raise and lower layer at its most basic. With that in mind your desire for more keys is attained!
This keyboard can be useful to learn Dvorak or other non qwerty systems of typing while still being able to quickly change back and forth. Many Keyboard covers come in the way of typing, especially when trying to up your speed with Dvorak.
The idea, if implemented well, is amazing. Most helpful for typing in native languages, other than english. The software on the desktop can update / modify keys based on user interactions and options.
Can anyone tell me of any vendors for those tiny e-ink screens?
I have been looking forever for screens that can fit into a keycaps.
edit: Even non e-ink screens are ok.
edit: Upon closer inspection of the images, and more importantly, their library page, it looks like they have a giant e-ink screen and transparent keys. This is a clever design and I would consider it a win if the mechanical performance of the keys is on par with regular keyboards.
I believe if Apple can replace the stupid touch-bar with a row of e-ink keys. That will solve a lot of my problems. I myself have been imagining such a keyboard for longest time; happy to see somebody is thinking in same direction. This can be awesome thing for POS, and domain specific software getting rid of those finger twisting combinations.
This looked nice. I really want a keyboard that changes it's keycaps when I change language. But then I read this bit "all your settings are saved automatically to the cloud"
Not all the keys can change and the ones that can't are all Mac ones which limits the adoption of Windows users which like it or not are still the vast majority
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