I use keyboards all day, every day. I currently have three $200+ "ergo" keyboards (two for PCs, another one for a Mac). They serve me well as nearly frictionless devices that turn my keystrokes into money. In the past I have paid more for keyboards that sucked. I have built my own keyboards. I will stick with a good keyboard brand for a decade, no problem.
The current state of keyboards is pretty bad. Microsoft lost me as a customer about ten years ago because they started going cheap on keys (which is a shame, because the original Ergo keyboard they did in the early 90s was nearly perfect, and I have several cow-orkers who are still using those, those and similar ones). The market is full of "gamer" keyboards with various clickity-keys and little differentiation. Their layouts are uniformly terrible.
I don't know if the keyboardio keyboard will be any good. It may be an ergo disaster that I am unable to type on. But I'm pretty sure I want to buy the next keyboard that keyboardio does, assuming they can survive as a company and keep making new designs.
I think there is an untapped market for keyboards that don't suck. It may not be a massive market, but it's definitely nonzero. The ergo market currently doesn't have very many players, and none that really understand tech workers.
I'd pay good money for an Ergo keyboard with mechanical switches. The last decade or so of MS keyboards have been rubber-domed disasters. I cannot type on the things.
I pre-ordered a couple KeyboardIO keyboards, and maybe I can make them work well with a little firmware noodling. Looks like November or later . . . .
If it's built as well as my Ergo from them. I look forward too it. They make some very refined and well thought out implementations of otherwise obvious keyboards. And they're open source firmware support is amazing.
If only they'd make a split layout ergo design. One of the only mechanical ergos out there (available today) is the Matias Ergo Pro. And it's got a lot of dumb design decisions. Like dedicated copy/cut etc keys that just send Ctrl-C Ctrl-X etc. Bizarre. Strange placement of Ctrl that still, after months of usage, cause me typos. And a remote Esc that hurts more than normal to reach. Among other silly key placements. All of these for no good reason. A 20 minute revision during design and it'd be a perfect keyboard.
I'd get a Kinesis but they're so huge and 90s looking.
Most promising looking device is the Keyboardio, but that'll be a year or so.
The Ergo 4000 is the keyboard that made me rage quit Microsoft keyboards. As far as I'm concerned it's the inflection point of the race to the bottom in the MS keyboard group. Bad key travel, bad decisions about keyboard layout, generally crappy build quality.
MS keyboards are frustrating. Their latest attempt at an ergo had a lot of promise, but they nerfed the function and escape keys to the point of unusabiity. (I know that F-keys are awful, but all of the software I use is addicted to them, so...)
I would pay quite a bit of money for a keyboard that didn't suck.
I just want a vanilla split keyboard with decent key travel. And it looks like I'm going to have to start building keyboards myself to get one.
Yeah. I picked the Ergodox because it's basically an off-the-shelf part these days. Order one today, you'll have it on Tuesday. The same is not true of most other keyboards like that.
I agree with your points on ergo design, we did a survey with the thousands on community members and only like 4% would buy an ergo design which was lower than expected. It's important for us to address from a design perspective but we want to do incremental keyboard revision, otherwise consumers won't be able to adapt to the massive transition in a dynamic and ergo design.
I'm certainly not saying ergo keyboards aren't useful. It's just that dedicating dozens of prototypes that will always float hands up and to the right (to get at the vowels) seems a fools errand. Ergos are great! I just think, in the same way a cyclist can buy a $4000 bike to save 10 lbs, when a moderate diet would achieve the same weight reduction, that it seems a bit misplaced resources.
I had an Ergo way back, and it was a decent keyboard until something failed on the bottom row. I've since moved on to building a Ergodox in 2014 that I've been daily using since.
This model looks really slick, and adds a number of nice innovations to the form factor. I'd reconsider if my current keyboard wasn't so bullet-proof.
The Ergo pro is an excellent keyboard. I’ve had two. Biggest problems are reliability - my first had a bunch of keys stop working in 9 months! They sent a replacement half for $99. That one stopped working 13 months later.
I would google around and read some reviews on Amazon and Reddit before committing. Sadly these issues seem common.
Their warranty support was… not good. Their COO didn’t really stand by their product. I know 4 other people who had similar experiences - they all love the keyboard but switched after it basically fell apart.
I’d buy another in a heartbeat if I knew it would last well beyond the warranty like every single other keyboard I’ve ever had over 32 years of computer ownership.
I'm RSI-adjacent (never diagnosed, but flat keyboards give me pangs after a while) and have a ~6 year old home-made Ergodox currently, and really like it (though I have to admit, there's a definite cognitive overhead switching between QWERTY on my laptop, productivity-focussed split, and gaming-focussed split that gets annoying sometimes). At the time I built it, it seemed like a cheaper way of checking if one of these things would help than grabbing a Kinesis.
I've been kind of thinking about upgrading for a while though, and there's an accretion of new features building up that are starting to make the idea seem a little less wasteful. The new generation designs like this that have an integrated screen for extra data _really_ appeal (my Ergodox is pre-RGB/backlighting, so you can't tell the keyboard's state at a glance); that, combined with hot-swappable key sockets, novel input mechanisms (rotary encoders for volume/Lightroom control!), the sort of tenting support the ZSA Moonlander supports etc. are all pretty exciting.
I've never quite managed to convince myself to spend time on keyboards as a hobby, but I'm so grateful others love it.
Welcome to the world of ergo niche keyboards. Basically everything that isn't a Microsoft Ergo or clone is $200+ and it only gets more expensive as you get further from that. An alternative to this is building one yourself.
There are 3 keyboards in this space (split with mechanical switches) now: the Ergodox EZ ($295) (which I'm typing this on right now), the Keyboardio ($329) and the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard ($220). The Keyboardio and UHK are still under development; I preordered the UHK about a year ago and its delay has been OK (a few months, it seems). I also ordered the Ergodox EZ at the same time, that one wasn't delayed and shipped last December. Each of them has a slightly different focus/gimmick - Ergodox is more DIY and customizable, UHK has a bunch of add-on modules like trackpad and thumbcluster that can be clicked in, the Keyboardio is more 'artisanal' with the wood and all.
I didn't (pre)order the Keyboardio because it uses non-standard key caps - I don't think they'll be in business very long after they ship because I don't think their pricepoint is sustainable vis a vis the size of the market. At least on the others you can easily swap out most parts. The UHK is sourced locally (i.e., EU) as well, which I think gives them an advantage in the long run. Then again, even if such a keyboard lasts for say 5 years - I'll have gotten my money out of it several times over, considering it's the main 'tool' I have in my hands each and every day.
Next-generation? What separates this from Ergodox or Keyboardio? And all of the above seem to be a step backwards from the Maltron and Kinesis Advantage which have been around for decades. Dactyl and the like are the only ergo keyboards I might label "next-generation."
I bought an Ergo Dox a couple years ago. It was by far my most expensive investment so far (due to exchange rates and import taxes) but it was a complete game changer for me.
As much as I was sold on it, a part of me still thought I was being duped into buying something that wouldn't really help me in any way but I'm so glad I was wrong. Typing on the Ergo Dox feels like a completely different experience from regular keyboards, because it fundamentally is. It's a keyboard that adapts to my body and arms, as opposed to the other way around which is the (unfortunate) norm.
The biggest reason I can't see making the switch to ergo keyboards is that at the end of the day I'm still stuck with my laptop when I'm out and about. It's just too much trouble to retrain my brain when I can only use these fancy keyboards 50% of my time.
The problem is there's no good ergo layouts with mechanical switches. Something like the MS Ergo 4000 or Sculpt, with Cherry MXes.
Closest I've found is the Matias Ergo Pro[1], but it has several inexplicably bad design decisions. Dedicated Copy paste undo buttons, that just send ctrl-z,x,c,v. Awkward positioning of Ctrl and Escape for no reason. Terrible crappy little arrow keys. Really weird shit like having a USB hub, then putting the port on the inside with no space to plug things in. After using it for a month, I'm still often making mistakes and will probably go back to the MS Sculpt, which at least has scissor switches instead of the terrible domes.
It's like every keyboard designer to do ergo has had a stroke and intentionally messes stuff up. Kinesis is stuck in the 90s with their huge success and terrible look (and again, weird layout). The Keyboardio is probably the least offensive, as long as the modifier key system is smooth. It's stupid that in 2015 we still don't have great keyboards. The stackoverflow guy's CODE keyboard even focused on backlights. Who the hell is spending $100+ on keyboards and can't touch type? Strange market I suppose.
I use keyboards all day, every day. I currently have three $200+ "ergo" keyboards (two for PCs, another one for a Mac). They serve me well as nearly frictionless devices that turn my keystrokes into money. In the past I have paid more for keyboards that sucked. I have built my own keyboards. I will stick with a good keyboard brand for a decade, no problem.
The current state of keyboards is pretty bad. Microsoft lost me as a customer about ten years ago because they started going cheap on keys (which is a shame, because the original Ergo keyboard they did in the early 90s was nearly perfect, and I have several cow-orkers who are still using those, those and similar ones). The market is full of "gamer" keyboards with various clickity-keys and little differentiation. Their layouts are uniformly terrible.
I don't know if the keyboardio keyboard will be any good. It may be an ergo disaster that I am unable to type on. But I'm pretty sure I want to buy the next keyboard that keyboardio does, assuming they can survive as a company and keep making new designs.
I think there is an untapped market for keyboards that don't suck. It may not be a massive market, but it's definitely nonzero. The ergo market currently doesn't have very many players, and none that really understand tech workers.
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