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This guy got deep ties with the industry. A lot of ergonomic keyboards are open source, so I think you will never see a fair take on a channel like this.
@@pred4507 that's indeed true. I was seeing this video and asking myself: why this guy made a "ergo keyboards" video without trying any of the keebs actually used by the community (corne sofle, etc).
I've been using only ergo boards for a bit over two years at this point. Most of us that have gotten into ergo boards didn't get into it because we wanted a keyboard that sounded good but we needed some type of change in order to use a keyboard without our hands dying. I use a 36 key split CRKBD layout and am able to type comfortably at about 130wpm throughout the day while working. I feel like harping on the boards feel initially is a little bit out of the spirit of what ergo boards are trying to accomplish. I also totally understand the learning curve that you have to go through in order to use an ergo board efficiently. It doesn't help that you don't touch type with your right hand, so a change in layout would be a lot harder to manage. Gaming is also not the greatest benchmark for using an ergo board. While it's possible, I find it a lot easier to have a separate left-hand gamepad so that I can have all the keys I need for gaming and then being able to go back to the ergo board when I need to type for work and personal stuff. It might have just been me, but I felt that your take on the whole ergo board topic was biased towards sound and switch feel when those aren't even the priority of the boards. I'd love to see you revisit this topic without harping on the boards for feel when that's not the primary goal for the boards.
The way Hipyo evaluated these boards is fair in that it's the same value assessment he provides in his reviews, and shows there is a wide range of experiences from boards that all claim to be ergonomic which is good consumer information. But yes, I agree that this video could unfairly discussed some from exploring economic options. In my opinion, ergonomic setups should start with a seated postural analysis as it's foundation and once that is optimized you can start picking the gear that best suits you. Someone in pain should rightfully treat this as a chronic condition and not just personal preference in peripherals ( blanket statement, I'm not accusing anyone of doing so). Even if you choose to hire an ergonomist to do the analysis for you, it could be well worth the money in the long run. Great video And to the original commenter, well written and very informative, thank you.
@@HipyoTech One other thing I can suggest (as I put in my own comment), is that ones that let you reprogram how they work should be reprogrammed to help you with what you actually do. The thing is, these shortcuts may not help at all during a typing test, such as AWSD arrowkey remapping and what not. That, and some of the keyboards you were using were using the ortholinear setup, which I've tried and I personally hate, despite it being vetted as "the most ergonomic." Over a week will absolutely not cut in becoming used to that layout, let alone a split keyboard setup. That being said... you do have a 3D printer now... maybe look into the crazy world of custom ergonomic nightmares.
You ever hear that saying about judging a fish by it's ability to climb a tree? Yeah, that's a little like judging ergonomics by the sound the switches make and their gaming ability. Jumping to ortholinear or column staggered, as others have noted, is a lot to adjust to. It's not like relearning a new layout, but it is a lot. But it's necessary to adjust to if you're going to fairly evaluate the setup. Judging the boards you usually make videos on by the standards of ergonomic factors would result in an equally awful outlook. I mean, who builds a custom keyboard without a thumb cluster, or even a split spacebar?
>use split keyboard for ergonomic reasons >doesn't push them far enough apart to actually have shoulders and elbows relaxed Also, you sit with your desk too high, and you're defaulting to raised wrists, which would work with a high rest, but hovering is definitely putting strain on them.
And also doesn't know how to correctly type. Ortho-columnar keyboards enforce the correctly placement of the fingers and this dude doesn't correctly align to the home row, doesn't use the pinkies and almost doesn't use the ring fingers. This was flawed from the beginning...
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE for the love of your wrists try an ergonomic keyboard that TENTS. Tenting alters your resting wrist position. I highly recommend the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard or UHK, with the wrist rests and thumb cluster addon. I really appreciate the split left and right style because you can pull them farther apart and keep your shoulders wide open and relaxed. Oh, and you should try lowering your desk. It’s too high, so your elbows and forearms can’t get a healthy 90 degree angle.
Watching your hands try to type on these things says a lot about if an ergo board is going to work well or not. You're moving hands all around the keyboards like they have no home-row or resting position. It also seems like you're heavily reliant on your index fingers to push keys that are supposed to be pushed by other fingers. I had a lot of these problems and they're actually why I forced myself to switch. The difficulty of learning meant I would have the chance to correct my typing style at the same time at what was essentially no extra cost. Being able to type fast was not the point of home-row for typing, and being able to type fast using a wonkey method doesn't make that method a good idea for regular use. The point behind split boards is about keeping your shoulders and arms on the same plane, rather than having them tilt inward, and then your wrists tile outward. All of your arms should be following the same through-line the whole way, so even if you position the keyboard halves inward, at least tilt the halves so that your wrists aren't bending. On a similar note, your chair is too low in reference to the desk, your forearms should be roughly parallel with the floor, not inclined upwards. Your chair back is also way too far back and isn't properly supporting you during a lot of the typing footage here. Your hands should float above the keyboard over a centralized home, and your wrists should never be below your hands. Until you fix a bunch of these things no amount of ergo is going to help you because you are cancelling out ever bit of potential good with these things. Its entirely possible that you'd be fine without ergo if you fixed these things. Additionally, changes like ergo aren't going to immediately make you feel better, most of your pain is likely from damage caused by typing the way you have been, and you need to let that damage have time to heal. Ergo helps reduce the injuries' being caused, but itself is not a magical healing technique. In regards to keyboards Max-Ergo but You Essentially Relearn to Type: Dactly Manuform or its more commercial variant: AmHatsu, Kinesis Advantage, Ergo with adjustment time - ZSA Moonlander, Atreus-like boards This barely counts as Ergo - Keychron Q11 So much of the ergo space is DIY stuff right now because companies don't want to make the huge investment into making these boards and hoping that they appeal to enough people. When it comes to a niche sub-community like ergo-mech, maybe you should have asked someone about ergo stuff before you published something like this. I know you said you're not going in as an expert, but you went in so blind that you not only didn't have a good sample of the boards that are out there, but you also failed to utilize the ones you had in front of you in a way that might have actually given you some benefit. That all said... yeah that 2nd board looked pretty trash.
I 90% agree. Most of your points are spot on. Where I disagree is the same reason my gaming setup was more comfortable and relaxing to my mom than her expensive supposed ergonomic injury specialist setup: *Locking into a position isn't good for our bodies.* One of the biggest health benefits of martial arts is simply moving around and building a healthy core. A healthy home position for a repetitive task is good - but *the best shoes in the world won't fix the cashier's problem of standing in a small place for too long.* Our bodies aren't mean to be static. They are meant to move, stretch, flex, circulate. *If the position requires you to constantly hold up your own weight - that's referred to as **_fatiguing._* Long periods of fatigue lead to the body _compensating._ So an actually ergonomic setup should allow for some flexibility, several ways to relax and change position and still be comfortable. Your chair should have a neck rest. You should be able to move a little to the left or to the right, moved forward or back, leaned forward or back, and still be pretty comfortable. Your chair should be able to rotate, so you can limber your shoulders a bit. Also, most ergonomic keyboards seem to totally ignore that people have multiple types of computer tasks. Typing text is _one_ of them. But take an accountant for example. That's minimal compared to the numpad and mouse use. Is that keyboard _'ergonomic'_ for 1 hand typing? No, they are usually actively worse. Accountants are a common group for computer ergonomic injuries, and most 'ergonomic' keyboards are actively broken ergonomics for their use. Most of their ergonomic problems could be solved with a sawzall. Chop the legs of that desk, throw away the keyboard tray and foot stool.
Thank you all in this comments thread, thank you so much for putting the time to share your knowledge and experience in a place where even if there is not much exposure, it really did something good. Hopefully more people interested in the topic see your comments, and again, thanks for taking the time and sharing these comments!
"I've been doing this for 3 days now" You're literally re-learning to ride a bike ... this needs more time. It took me over a month to start being productive with my Kinesis and almost half a year to become fully comfortable with it.
Okay so I have a few keyboard recommendations and also some tips on how to select a good one and actually use one efficiently (both health and work wise). First off you probably don't want to go for a flat keyboard, key layout and split designs are important factors but there's a bit more to it than that. Preferably you want something that inclines slightly upward towards your wrists (negative tilt) so your wrists are positioned slightly higher (elevation-wise) and your fingers are resting naturally on the keyboard, with this you generally want some sort of wrist rest so your wrists will be properly elevated and most ergo keyboards come with them (except for that last expensive one idk what the point of that one was lol). Another factor is tenting, most good ergo boards will be raised in the center so your wrists/hands can be more naturally angled instead of totally flat. Other than that make sure you're sitting properly and your arms/hands aren't in any awkward angles, if you have a split keyboard you have more control/customization on where you want your hands to be (though it will give you significantly less mouse space if they're positioned too far away from each other). For keyboards I use a fairly cheap one that I highly recommend but I'm sure you can afford better. I use a cloud nine ergoTKL which does all the things I listed with the main caveat that you can't replace the switches as they're not hot-swappable. For the really nice expensive ones I recommend either the Kinesis Advantage360 or the ZSA Moonlander, the Moonlander you'll probably prefer as it's the only one hot swappable to my knowledge.
If you ever want to take another look at the first keyboard I would recommend seperating the two halves further apart. The main benifit of thos is the ability to spread them further apart, generaly to where your arms are at shoulder width. It definately does take getting used to, especially with those button clusters next to the thumbs (I've never had one with the thumb cluster).
yeah as someone who has a split keyboard... the whole point of it is to... split them apart to shoulder width. I'm also surprised that there is no tenting on that Ergodex, like, having your palms face exactly downwards is not going to be good, no matter what kind of keyboard you're using.
Keychron has a split board that has a typical layout (staggered keys vs the keys vertically aligned) so it’ll feel much more natural to type on. For me, it’s been a complete game changer for shoulder and wrist pain (also a climber here). It’s plug & play, customization through VIA, so much easier to start using and customize. You can use just one half or the other at a time if you like, so plenty of space for gaming.
You should probably rephrase the, "... typical layout (staggered keys vs the keys vertically aligned," portion for those who don't know better as it'll just lead to misconceptions, for the purposes of clarity and correctness. What you refer to as 'typical' is an uneven row stagger, +0u/+0.5u/+0.75u/+1.25u on the alphanumeric core, notice the inconsistency of the intervals that exaggerates the top and bottom stagger of the four alphanumeric rows; as opposed to the much rarer even row stagger. What you refer to as 'vertically aligned' is a columnar stagger, which can come in both even and uneven staggers depending on the board. Even stagger often comes as an isometric [equilateral triangular] grid, but even interval stagger, +0xu/+1xu/+2xu/+3xu on the alphanumeric core, can also exist on a skewed grid such as one based on a parallelogram with a horizontal base and a diagonal of θ°. Where there can be confusion can appear, and further misconception, is with the loose use of 'vertically aligned' also being applicable to ortholinear; which is also horizontally aligned just like your 'typical' board otherwise is (by your phrasing, 'typical' could also be 'horizontally aligned' with no further designator) but without stagger, forming a true square grid. The issue with potential misconception is that a person who does not know better will inevitably believe that A=B=C when that's not entirely true, this is why there are specific terms to better differentiate things into discrete categories. Then you have things like Alice/Arisu which are typically a modified horizontal stagger that introduces a bend into the grid pattern. Then furthering that you also have different sculpts, like the typical flat with potential for tilt adjustment and potential of having profiled keys, positive sculpting like the Surface Sculpt and alternatives (Logi makes one, I'm not sure who else does), and negative sculpts like the MoErgo Glove80 and similar halfpipe-like boards do, then tented boards end up brute forcing their way into the sculpted category, especially when they have adjustable thumb clusters. Things are more complex than just 'typical vs non-typical [a binary system] (along with bad, misleading, incorrect, and/or incomplete wording, naming, and/or phrasing),' and thus the need for use of proper terms and descriptors because there's a legitimate range of what's possible and what's available.
I'm really disappointed with this video, it's like the only research you did was whatever sponser/pr boards you found in your closet. Logically you should've tried the boards in reverse order, starting with the one most like a regular keyboard. This feels like a soft hit piece on ergo keebs. Ergo keyboards can be beneficial to people with wrist/elbow, videos like this don't highlight any of those features. Instead you only focused on your own frustration, inconveniences and laziness. You can do better.
Sorry it wasn't what you expected. But this showcased my genuine first impressions and experiences with them. Not every consumer has weeks or months to dedicate to research on the topic and my experience could be similar to theirs.
@@HipyoTech you don't need to do months of research to find affordable and accessible ergonomic keyboards. Literally a Google search would've shown you a microsoft/Logitech keyboards for less than $100. Even the kinesis advantage is less than $200. Not of all us get sent $700 keebs. You're being disingenuous at best.
To answer your question: I think when you’re a software developer in your early 30s and have a joint disorder you kind of have no choice other than becoming an “ergonomics person”. For some people it’s going to be worth the retraining but one might argue maybe we should just design keyboards with ergonomics in mind so when kids use them for the first time it’ll just be training and not retraining 😅 Have you ever tried the glove80? I’m curious how it would be because it looks hard to get used to but also might be a grail keyboard ⌨️
Other than the keyboards themselves, I think to get the most out of ergonomic setup , you could also adjust your desk/chair height, arm rest angle/height, monitor height/angle. If mech keybs are a rabbit hole, ergonomic anything is an entirely new rabbit hole just as much, maybe even more...
I'm not as in depth as the other folks here in their descriptions, but I did wanna say I don't think 3 days is enough time to get used to a ergo keyboard, considering you've practiced typing on a normal keyboard your entire life.
Based on your hand placement on a normal layout, I think and ergonomic keyboard with staggered columns (like the Ergodox) could work well for you but, you would need to unlearn resting your pinky on shift. That's probably what made your left wrist hurt. On a standard keyboard, your left hand position makes sense because it lets you rest your hand in a more comfortable position. Layouts where the columns are staggered are meant to make it easier to rest your fingers on the homerow while maintaining a similar hand position. But, in your case it meant reaching further than you're used to to rest your pinky on shift.
Hello I'm one of those ergo people. I've used exclusively ergo boards for about a year and a half, corne 36 key. - I think you went into this with the wrong goal. If you have any pains you need to understand where they are coming from before you start trying to fix them. The ergo section on the reddit mech keyboard discord has a ton of resources that can help you. - Any extended use on a new layout is going to hurt a bit at first just because you are doing a bunch of new finger movements. - As im sure many others have said 1 day is not enough time to learn a new layout. - You only used full sized key caps and switches. Something a little closer to a laptop key might be better for you since there is less finger travel on each press. Now the real question is can you make good content with that? That might be tricky. You definitely were on to something with the lack of build quality on a lot of ergos. The mass produced office worker ones are pretty bad. While the more common hobbiest ones are of the exposed pcb and acrilic sandwitch variety. A lot of ergos definitely go for the function over form. Might be worth checking out Ben Vallack's videos a pretty stunning ergo keyboard.
I usually really like your vids and I still found the jokes funny, but the hard content part of this was hard to watch. Poorly researched hot takes on a topic that deserves better attention (health).
One of the problems I see is that you don't type correctly on a normal keyboard. That is one of the reasons that you found it so hard to switch to a columnar layout. You should rest your fingers on A, S, D, F, J, K, L, ; . You had your ring on A which is wrong. So you're not just learning the different positions for the keys. You're also learning different letters for different fingers. If you are really interested in reducing arm and wrist pain (and you should be. RSI can be crippling) then you should set up the ergodox with tenting to reduce supination and the correct angle to reduce ulnar deviation. Then switch to a completely different layout that is not QWERTY (something like whorf). That way you can spend some time each day learning that board and the new layout, but then still be able to go back to work using your old keyboard and qwerty. You will be able to keep both layouts in your head. Then when you feel you are up to a decent speed on the new layout and keyboard then switch full time. I switched to an ergo split mech keyboard at the start of working from home in 2020. It has saved my wrist and arms so much pain.
I use ergo for work and a normal full size for non work and have been doing this for over 10 years. The main benefit of the ergo are the ones that allow you to tip the keyboard away from you. Microsoft and Logitech are good for this.
You can't evaluate an ergonomic keyboard based on only 7 days' use. It takes at least 3-4 weeks to adjust muscle memory, etc., and as others have pointed out, it makes a big difference if you're a touch typist or hit keys in a random, self-taught fashion (not naming names). 14:30 pretty much says it all. I switched to ergonomic keyboards 30+ years ago due to an RSI in my left wrist. As I was standing in the office supply store looking at the various keyboards, my left wrist in a brace and in pain, a lady came up, looked at my brace and said, "Get yourself an ergonomic keyboard if you want to avoid pain the rest of your life. I had *two* RSI's -- one in each wrist -- and an ergonomic keyboard saved me. Just try this: Drop your hands to your sides, then just raise your elbows and see where your hands and fingers are." I did, and realized the shape and curvature of my hands and wrists were NOT the shape and (lack of any) curvature of a straight keyboard. The lady told me it would take me about 3-4 weeks to adjust, and my typing would be slow and awkward, but once I got used to it, I'd never go back. She was 1000% correct. One caveat: You have to find the right *combination* of ergonomic features for you. I wanted to try mechanical keyboards, so I got a Keychron V10 Max 75% Alice layout ("ergonomic"). Well, after one week I'm now sitting here with my left elbow in pain due to either the lack of tenting (the raise in the middle, or dome in the case of keyboards like the MS Sculpt, etc.) or the higher keycaps after using chiclet keys for several decades. I'm typing this on my MS Sculpt again and my elbow isn't bothering me, except for the lingering pain caused by the flat Alice keyboard and/or the taller keycaps. I really, really loved the sound and feel of the V10 Max, but my fingers kept getting caught on the keys due to my ergonomic touch-typing style (my fingers move as little as possible, in a more horizontal direction). So now I'm hoping to find a mechanical keyboard that's split low profile, so I can tent the middle. (My MS Sculpt is ancient and may die at any time, but Microsoft discontinued them and who knows when incase will be releasing them. Plus it's a membrane keyboard, so there's that.) There's no "one size fits all" when it comes to ergonomic keyboards.
Tbh the biggest barrier to entry for most people, not just Keyboard enthusiasts, is learning proper touch typing techniques. Ergo boards are made for standard touch typing, so if you search and peck or you use a personal version of touch typing, you’ll struggle. I used to type with angle mod, using ring finger with P, and with my left hand. And even just by swapping to 40% I had to fix my technique. And as for Ergo boards: I haven’t used it yet but the Corne and Dactyl seem like EKB community favorites, but they are all very extreme changes for your everyday person. For a person new to ergo boards, the Ultimate Hacker Keyboard (UHK) and Dygma Raise look like solid choices since those two are essentially just normal keyboards cut in half, with the Raise even being able to come back together if I recall. Also, something else of note: Keyboard sound is still sort of important in the Ergo community, but the thing far more focused on is layout. Traditional boards are separated by feel and sound. On the other hand, Ergo boards like to change and experiment with where keys are placed, how they’re placed, and sometimes even how they work.
I mean yeah, if you don’t know how to type properly, you’re gonna have a hard time with any of these keyboards. Watching you use your ring finger for so many keys made me physically ill
I never even noticed till now that he does that, not that I suppose it ultimately matters with most keyboards, but ye, I could oly imagine you have a horrible experience with an ergonomic keyboard that expects you to type correctly
It's interesting to see that you're maintaining rowstag (row stagger) hand positioning with the "ergo" boards. With Colstag (column stagger, keys are vertically aligned), the major theory is that you do not need to move your fingers side to side and they mostly need to move straight up and down only (Pinky and index do, but the rest don't), reducing stress on the finger joints. Next major thing is your wrists. In a lot of your clips, you're heavily angling your wrists to get into position. For the unibody boards (single piece ones), you should be moving the board closer or further from you until your hands are straight with your arms. For split boards, you move the halves such that each arm can be straight from your body, and again straight wrists. (Pro tip, mouse can go in the middle, or you can move the right half out of the way). I considered split ergonomics for myself just for fun, since i came to the realisation that the way i position my hands more or less gave me Colstag movement. The majority of ergo boards tend to be soldered sandwich kits as well. I think that's a bit different to your normal content, but if you're interested in trying ergos...
I recommend learning how to home row type before transitioning to an ergo or split board. This took me personally about two weeks to learn on a regularly staggered keyboard with another two weeks to be at ~70WPM on my Idobao ID75. Ergo isn't for everyone (I use a Raindrop 60% daily) but learning that first step is crucial to transition to an ergo board, especially with a columnar layout. I think the consensus here is this is a bad take and warrants a follow up. Love you Hipyo, keep making great content for this community!!
Thanks, but my take is basically that ergo isn't for everyone - if you pass a bunch of hurdles to appreciate it the correct way then I feel like my experiences here reflect that
I don't think this was in "bad faith", but you need to at least do some cursory research before dropping into ergonomic keyboards and how to use them. The Microsoft Sculpt is probably actually the most popular ergo keyboard out there due to corporate environments issuing them for work. But for enthusiasts, you can have different types. No mention of standard QWERTY staggered design vs Ortholinear or attempts to setup the split units for a tenting orientation... and all of this, while you are on an *adjustable height desk* and have not used that to reduce your wrist bending either. The last board you tested was the only one that added height that may have helped. I'm gonna be honest this makes me take your other keyboard opinions with a much larger grain of salt because this really didn't go into the details I would expect from a channel basically dedicated to keyboards. This is not a fair review of any of these keyboards, because you zero-effort into understanding them. Think "LTT reviews RED Magic cameras" level of missing the mark.
I ❤ ergo keyboards, but it takes about two weeks to “get it” with a nice split ergo keyboard. I started with the Microsoft natural ergo board like 15 years ago and loved it. I moved on from there to the Kenisis Advantage 2 and loved that for years. I now go between my Keebio Iris and my Ferris Sweep. I love them both and with a bit of modding the Iris sounds and feels great.
Oh man, the og beige Microsoft ergo was the first keyboard I ever had all to myself. The number of hours I put on that thing in AIM and BBS days, plus Jedi Academy? What a great keyboard, membrane or no. I use an iKBC CD108 V2 now, but sometimes I really just want to hit up eBay and get back onto that exact board, PS2 connection and all.
I know someone who just recently switched to an ortholinear ergo keyboard. It started much the same way for him, he went from 110wpm to 20wpm. It didn't take him long to get back up to speed though, three hours of typing tests and he'd broken 100wpm with 100% accuracy. Ergonomics isn't an instant change. It's something you have to let your body get used to, and there can be pains associated with it. This is something that can take weeks to months to do. Days, or even one week, isn't enough. I went through similar with my back, forcing myself to sit properly instead of slouching all the time. It wasn't great for a while, but after my body got used to it, I'll never go back.
I got a second hand Moonlander and it was still expensive. It took me several days to be semi decent at it. 8 months later I love it and am as uncomfortable on a regular keyboard now as I was on the Moonlander. A big positive for the split keyboard is to have my halves spread shoulder length apart, really helped with back and shoulder pain.
Ergo keyboards are unlikely to solve tennis/golf elbow issues, for anyone watching and wondering. If you have rheumatoid arthritis, or know specifically the issue is caused by forearm pronation or wrist hypertension, then an ergo board might help. Elbow and forearm issues caused by tennis elbow must be addressed by PT.
I like how Hipyo used the most uncomfortable stuff for years (justifying it with sound and "feel") and only now comes to the understanding that the proper ergonomic posture is when you don't hover your hands over a keyboard for 11 hours a day. I'm seriously sick of people telling everyone that wrist rests are for your wrists to rest, while there's Microsoft Sculpt out there, and the design literally tells you to keep your wrists on it the whole time while your fingers are facing downwards. I only decided to swap my Mx Keys from Keychron K5 Pro because I spilled some coffee on it. At first, I really struggled because it is still not low profile enough. Now I'm using a wrist rest that's higher than the keyboard by like a half-centimeter. It's okay, and I understand why it "feels" better + it's much better for gaming, but when I need to do a long long typing session, I usually get back to my barely working Mx Keys. It's just more comfortable. Now, to the keyboard choices in this video. The guy clearly researched the top picks in the ergonomic space and then made sure he didn't buy those. I mean, where's Moonlander, where's Kinesis Advantage 2? This is a joke of a review.
I had the same wrist pain and I went with the Dygma Raise with the Tenting Kit. I think you would really like it and the tenting may end up giving a different type of feel/relief than the models you tried! Good luck!
I am super excited to see somebody who actually cares about keyboard quality starting to look at ergo boards! There are VERY few places to get a board for someone who cares BOTH about keyboard aesthetics and quality AND about ergonomic posture. However, I think you came to this challenge kind of backwards; the right way to start with ergo boards is to figure out how to hold your hands, then find a board that helps you hold your hand that way; not to get a bunch of random boards with "ergo" stickers on them and just kinda vibe it out. I have many, many thoughts and I hope you find some of these useful - I'd *love* it if these started getting more popular and those of us who need ergo boards got more varied options! You want your hands to be a bit less than shoulder width apart, and for maximum ergonomics points, you want your wrist to be neutral: neither in flexion nor pronation, no scissoring of your radius and ulna. The reason that ergo keyboards are split is to facilitate that posture. The reason that some keyboards are ortholinear are to let your fingers move more naturally, but as you have discovered, learning an ortho layout is painful, and its ergo benefits are considerably more debatable than that of a basic split keyboard. I'd definitely start off with split staggered only, and maybe try out ortholinear layouts if you're *really* in the mood for a challenge, later. Separately. (Note that if you *really* hate yourself, you can get an ortholinear *non*-split keyboard, like the Idobao x YMDK ID75, or the very trendy "Work Louder: Creator Board") I'd recommend checking out the offerings from Keeb dot io (no link because TH-cam seems to think all links are spam these days). They sell kits and prebuilts. Personally I'm a fan of low-profile boards, so I recently upgraded from the Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB (MX browns, soldered, boo) to the Keebio Cepstrum (choc v1 low profile, hotswap). This will take up a *very* small amount of space on your desk, if that's your main concern. If you want something in a more traditional form factor, the Mistel Barocco MD770 will give you something that snaps together to form a non-split keyboard so you can try it out a little bit at a time (sorry, no hotswap though). Note that the keebio options kinda *look* like they can fit together like the barocco, but they actually can't. You should also find a model with a tenting kit, so that you can get a sense of how the "right" posture is supposed to be, particularly if your wrists are currently hurting. The kinesis freestyle rgb is not the best quality from a custom-keyboard perspective (it's plastic, it's pingy, it definitively does not thock as shipped), but if you get it with the tenting kit, you'll immediately get an idea of how to set it up with a wrist-rest and how you're supposed to hold your hands, and then you can graduate to some of the more custom options I listed above with your own tenting and wrist rests (or not, depending on what you find comfortable). A lot of this is preference, but alice layouts are kind of a scam. The absolute most important thing for ergonomics is *hand separation*. Putting your hands together to sit at a keyboard physically forces you to hunch forward, so the halves of the keyboard really need to come apart, not just be angled. Position the two halves of the keyboard such that your hands will stay where you are if you fully relax them. If you relax your hands over a standard keyboard, you'll notice that your hands will sort of cross each other as your wrists straighten out. You want your wrists to be totally relaxed when using an ergo board. Finally, although ergo keyboards can help, if your wrists *already hurt*, you need to take a break from typing for a while, or at least drastically cut back; the repetitive motion of pressing keys is not good for you regardless of how good your posture is, and once there's an injury you need to let it heal and stop poking at it. The thing that a good ergo setup does is mostly make it so that your wrists won't start hurting *again* once you've recovered.
This, hard agree. This video feels so awkward. Like he didn’t learn, didn’t try, and used them less than a day like it takes two weeks just to feel normal.
keebio has a lot of great entry boards with familiar layouts like the sinc or the kbo-5000. Forget the weird key staggering on a lot of these ergonomic boards. Even just straightening out your wrist posture can do wonders. The advantage of split boards is that you can position each half to match your natural wrist angle and shoulder width. If you pay attention to how your wrists/arms are when you're typing on a straight board, you'll see that you're wrists are (probably) always bent and your arms are tucked in towards the center to compensate. Keeping your wrists and arms straight is the key here and your tendons will thank you over time. You can take it even further by tenting if you really need it, but for me just the positioning change was a game changer.
I've been using a Microsoft Sculpt since 2018. It's awful for gaming but great for writing emails. They don't make them anymore but are allowing a company called In Case to make them. If you get one, try it with the raised base. It took me a couple of weeks to really learn the layout.
I would love to see what you would do with a Keebio Iris. Loving mine for a while now. It can take some time to get used to, but customizability is what makes ergo boards work IMO. You can make the layouts and shortcuts YOU need. More buttons = more reach, so layers are better than a bigger board and QMK/VIA work great. The Iris has been hotswap since Rev6. For a small company, having videos and clear, thorough documentation for everything is great. They were super nice for any questions, too.
This challenge kind of feels set up to fail. The decision not to do any kind of research on ergonomics beforehand is … I don’t know why you thought that was a reasonable approach. Without understanding the intent behind the design decisions, how did you intend to engage with them in any meaningful way? And a big chunk of where you gave up on the keyboards seems to be running into the entirely expected teething problems of needing to retrain muscle memory. It was well within expectations to require more than one day for typing to stop feeling wrong using a keyboard that wants you to change how your hands move or are held. I think that ergonomic layouts, much like non-qwerty layouts, have a big personal motivation factor behind whether they work for a given person. If someone is really interested in making the switch and prepared to put in a bunch of effort, then they’ll probably be happy with the result. But if they aren’t really all that interested, then they really should stick with what they’re familiar with. At home I use a Moonlander as my primary keyboard. Since I use a drawing tablet instead of a mouse, the “place the mouse between the halves” strategy works especially well because that’s exactly where I want to put the tablet in the first place.
The most common keyboards we recommended to clients were the Kinesis Freestyle 2, and the Goldtouch V2. In terms of ergonomics they are good tools for the job. In terms of premium feel, they're pretty standard but nothing special. *Also if you're having trouble you should really consider having an ergo assessment done. It looks like your desk might be a bit high relative to your chair but someone taking the time to go through this and the other contributing factors with you is a great investment in your health.
First of all I want to congratulate you on even attempting an ergonomic keyboard. Many people find it far too intimidating. It took me about two solid months to switch to an ergonomic keyboard. I needed to do this because I broke my wrist and couldn’t type for long periods of time with my right hand anymore. I started with the Ergodox EZ. One of the features of that keyboard is that you can tent it. I forget exactly which deviation this fixes, it might be ulnar deviation. I ended up going very extreme with the tenting and type at about an 80% tent. I now use a Moonlander in addition to the Ergodox. One other mistake I made is I should have learned the Colemak layout from the get-go rather than just switching to an economic keyboard in continuing to QWERTY. I’m certainly not an expert but let me know if you have any questions particularly regarding the first ergo keyboard.
I switched to my Lily58 pretty decently. Was a slight struggle for less than a month, but after that I was good. I can also use normal keyboards perfectly fine when needed. I also started using workman layout before that and took me only a month or two to be basically the same. Was def a struggle at first but maybe almost a year or so later I type at almost double my old qwerty speed. Not a normal result, but I suppose I got to relearn typing better.
ergonomic keyboards and other accessibility input devices are game changers (and in fact make using computers or playing games possible at all for a lot of people. the fact that default keyboard layouts have so many ergonomic and accessibility problems does mean that there is unfortunately some learning associated. for anyone interested in improving their RSI or finding a more accessible input option, do some research and pick a layout you are interested in learning, get switches you will like, and expect learning to take time.
I'm really vibing with my V10. From regular 75% to alice was a couple days of adjustment to be comfortable with and a couple weeks to be back to full speed (it's not _that_ much different after all). Now I'm really liking it, it's forcing me to not type stupid, and the little inward angle is pleasant. This was a impulse purchase, and I came to it with no expectations, but I'm gonna have to say I slightly prefer this layout over regular 75%.
Your lack of ergonomic knowledge shows, no offense, but to the detriment of your viewers & the public knowledge in general -- it will only (possibly) feel better if you've already hit a severe position of damage with your joints & connective tissues in your wrist (or shoulders, neck). Your ligaments etc. aren't innervated, so actually part of the problem of ergonomics when you DO have a chronic problem is that improvements you make don't give immediate feedback by virtue of decreased pain (ulnar deviation for example will inflame tissues in your wrist to the point that it DOES hurt). Also split keyboards is just an initial part of an overall solution; once split you can tent, mount at your sides, tilt, etc. You can't do that until you go split.
As someone using ergo keyboards for over 3 years i got to say that it definitely has some learning curve. I think it would be best to try a split keyboard with wristrest that has the standard qwerty layout(no staggered or ortho). Recommend to keep the split keyboard shoulder width apart. Im using UHK v2. It would also be easier if you learned to touch type
I switched to an ergodox layout almost a decade ago and very much like it, but the retraining period was a solid 4-6 weeks to get back up above 100wpm - as you discovered it is in no way intuitive, but that's going to be true for anything that fights your learned muscle memory. After training was done I can switch between standard layout and ergodox with no issue, but during training switching will really mess you up on both. But being able to keep the halves at shoulder-width separation really does help over time, and with tenting you can adjust positioning to exactly fit your posture. But if you're not really willing to do that retraining, a Kinesis Gaming Edge will get you like 80% of the benefits with a much more "normal" layout.
Maybe give the Keebio Splits a try. I built a KBO-5000, and it's a pretty good one (granted, I'm biased as it was my first I ever built). EDIT: For me, an ergo keyboard is a must. So much of my time is typing for work, and when I completed my home office, I wanted a proper setup. A big thing with ergo keyboards, especially ones that allow reprogramming, is to come up with a setup that works for you. For me, I have a layer setup that maps AWSD to the arrow keys and JIKL to mouse movements. This lets me keep my hands on the keyboard for most of the time, and greatly improves my performance on ACTUAL work (results for typing tests will obviously not appear, since the shortcuts are useless for them).
I switched to a split ergo about 3 months ago and I ended up designing, printing, and hand wiring my own for $65. I've got a bad shoulder, so I need my hands spread farther apart then a standard keyboard allows. I also love that I can move the right half off to the side to make more room for the mouse. QMK also gives me a lot of flexibility for game specific layouts. When it comes to "preference" Ergo keyboards are just custom keyboards with even more options. I'd suggest trying the ergo dox one more time, but slide the two halves to the far corners of your mouse mat. From there just do a typing test, and slowly adjust. it should take about 10-15 typing tests to find a comfortable spot for you. last thing, I prefer to have backspace and shift on my left thumb and Space and Enter on my right thumb.
I've been using the Feker Alice 80 for the better part of this year. It's my first Alice board, but it's been really solid, and is considerably more affordable than the boards in this video. Would recommend!
I love ergo keyboards... Especially the Alice layout. I can type nearly a hundred words a minute and I game on it, but I have severe carpal tunnel and this has alleviated a lot of my issues.
How's the flex on that AFA? It looks insane. Alice boards definitely have that awkward typing phase at first but I can't live without mine. The aesthetic and comfort are too 🔥
I've been using an ergo keyboard (Kinesis Advantage 2, $300), and it's been the best thing to happen to my wrists. I would LOVE for you to use this keyboard and then find a way to make it sound good. It does not have hot swappable switches at all. The PCB is flexible because of the key wells. It's... not for the aesthetics or the sound. It's ugly... loud, but it feels the best out of all the other keyboards I've tried. The other split ortho keyboards are better because you can place the splits apart. The kinesis advantage 360 is a bit better... but more expensive. There's a few companies out there that are also reselling modified versions of these with different switch options other than cherry red/brown. The keycaps on these things are using a different profile. The mount to the cherry stems just fine, but their profiles are different due to the shape of the keywells. Again, I would LOVE for you to try the ergodox style keyboards but custom ones made with dactyl or just the kinesis advantage boards... all of these are upwards of $400-500. But it's been some of the best $$ I've spent on peripherals.
The thumb clusters, re-programmability and key wells are game changers. Easily worth the money. I couldn't imagine paying the prices they're asking for that last keyboard he used.
Try the Kinesis Gaming Freestyle Edge keyboard. It's a mechanical keyboard with the standard layout but split, which is really easy to adapt to from a "regular" keyboard (IMHO). It puts my wrists in a more natural position, but doesn't have much a learning curve. I would suggest also adding the optional lift kit for it so you can tent the keyboard.
I use a split ortho layout keyboard everyday. Hipyo, I can see you don't understand at all because that angle you had the first keyboard at is all wrong. You're going to make it worse like that. Also, I've grown to like my keyboards, but I had to put the work into adjusting because I had carpal tunnel syndrome so bad I couldn't carry grocery bags. Using this I've been able to put off getting the surgery for 3 years because of this and will probably be able to put it off for another 10 or more as my elbows and wrists have gotten so much better. Your approach was wrong, you jumped into the most extreme with the split format, ortho with a layered layout, I use that but I worked my way up. Started with simple split for a few months, then got the two piece ortho with way less keys so you have to use layers for the layout. Even then I spent a weekend playing typing of the dead to learn, and the biggest thing to learn was the ortho because you have to teach your fingers to not go on the diagonals. This market for these keyboards is very small, so out of the box solutions generally suck because no big manufacturers want to make something for such a limited market and any small companies that make them usually start 300 for cheap and plastic stuff. You'll have to build your own if you want to tick anywhere near all the boxes. And by build your own I don't mean what you do, I mean actually soldering hot swap sockets, controller boards and possibly diodes or batteries to the pcb. That's what I did and it was one of best decisions I ever made. Your review was painful because you never addressed anything like that, you just said "I don't know anything!" and concluded ergo sucks. Not pointing out that there's a missed market here, or even bothering to look into why the split is there, or what the natural hand position is. Hell, most of your other videos you refer to the feet on the bottom of most keyboards as "Ergonomic", which they are not and you'd understand that if you actually understood what ergonomic is. If you're going to talk about ergonomic you need to actually research it. Your video is probably turning some people off of ergo keyboards (people who might nee them) because of this, and your lack of awareness of this shows a lack of responsibility. Do better.
id say the best solution is building something like a corne or a lily58 and 3d printing your own case with tenting for a true ergonomic experience that also looks really cool. The prebuilts just arent there yet in terms of quality imo, unless you order a build service for one of the boards i mentioned. Also, building something yourself is an amazing experience where you can truly customize to your specific liking. Split keyboards are still pretty niche, but the scene has progressed really nicely the past couple of years with typeractive, boardsource, splitkb and many others offering great easy affordable solutions and some of them even have build services, or offer nosolder kits for easy assembling.
other honorable mentions: kyria, piantor, cantor, sweep, sofle v2, 3w6 and gergoplex and these are just split keyboards, theres some great ergo nonesplit boards out there too
Yes, My first ergo keyboard was a redox, that I make using spare switches, a 3d printer case and it was handwired , I did that because any split or ergonomic keyboard is really expensive to test if is something that you like, after that I build a lily58 and I really like it. Almos all split keyboards are open source and you cant get the schematics and pcbs onlyne, and made the pcb with any pcb service like JLCPCB, or PCBWay. So you can reduce the entry if you can do that. The webpage keebfolio has a really long list of open source keyboard including ergoand split keyboards.
The keyboard halfs are made so you can tilt them for each of your hands to the most natural feeling positions, the main thing with these is to bend your elbows more outwards to rest more so your hand matches the turn of the keys.
I tried ergo keyboards for pain, but at the end of the day transitioning to a trackball is what helped me the most. Keeping a mouse around for gaming isn’t too difficult, and learning the trackball took a bit of time. But now I wouldn’t go back.
While they may not be for everybody, after being in the keyboard hobby for damn near a decade and developing wrist pain, I finally decided to try out an ergonomic board. I gave the Fekker Alice 98 board a try (I have to have that number pad) thinking it may not be for me but giving it a fair shot. For me, this is the way, it took a few days to get going, and maybe a week to really get back in the typing grove but man, there is no going back for me. I tried going back to my standard keychron for a day and it was so awkward.
I liked Hipyo as a person, but this video is so misguided and cringeworthy. If he watched any other youtubers Ergonomic Keeb videos before doing his own he would not have come off as badly uninformed, ignorant and shallow as he did in this video. Yes, switching to ergonomic keyboards takes time and retraining. He admits he knows little about ergonomics and he seems entirely unwilling to put effort in to try to learn. He clearly didn't do the research. Take the time to understand why you hurt. If you have medical insurance you could have spend za $35 on a copay for an actual doctors office visit to get a professional to look at if you are developing an RSI and get recommendations about what you should be doing differently instead of buying a steffoscope and a bunch more keyboards you try for a hour then discard. Sickening. I can't watch
I literally state in the video that I did not do any research, am not an ergonomic expert, and wanted to showcase my own personal experiences with them for entertainment. These are the first impressions that a LOT of people have. (while filming this I had quite a few friends over who tried the various boards and thought similar experiences) I'd like to do a full researched piece in the future, but based on the comments so far ergonomics seems HEAVILY subjective. I've already been to physical therapy for my wrists, and I appreciate you not making assumptions about my medical health. (also you must not be from the USA cus it sure wasn't $35)
Got the Vulkan Maja V2 when it was in group buy, and it's been wonderful so far. I don't know what it is about ergos, but the sound is usually pretty flat. The Maja really slaps though. As for typing, there's a huge warming up period. My typing speed suffered for the first month of use, but once you get used to it, it feels so much more natural than a standard layout. It's a subconscious change that occurs over time. It's like ASMR - if you're consciously trying to analyze what makes the keyboard special, you'll miss it entirely. But if you let it fade into the background, a sense of comfort and ease comes to you over time. My shoulders have much less tension as a result of one year of use.
I have been mainly using my dactyl-manuform mini for about a year now and I dont think I could ever go back to a regular keyboard. The split and ergonomic layout has significantly reduced the strain I feel in my wrists and forearm throughout the day. I have even switched over at work with a keebio IRIS and it has helped greatly.
So the two big reasons I have seen people talk about ergo boards are Ulnar Deviation and Pronation of the Radius and Ulna. Ulnar Deviation occours in your wrists when your wrists are bent outwards toward your pinky fingers. When resting on a regular keyboard with a straight layout, we tend to bring our forearms toward the center of our body, then bend our wrists outward toward our pinkies to get our fingers to lay straight on the home row position. This can cause long term Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSI) in our wrists. This is why ergo keyboards tend to have a less standard key layout, more angled so our wrist lies at a more natural position. Pronation of the Radius and Ulna (the two big bones in our forearm) occurs when those bones cross over each other. With your arm straight out in front of you and your palm to the sky, those two bones are parallel to each other. Turn your hand inwards so your palm is facing the ground, and those bones cross over each other. This can also cause an RSI. Ergo boards seek to raise the profile of each side of they keys so you don't twist your wrists as far to type, allowing the Radius and Ulna to not cross over each other as hard. The problem with the "ergonomics" industry is it is never a one size fits all. Chairs, keyboards, mice, any of them. Each keyboard may be perfect for one person but suck or cause more damage than a regular keyboard would for the next person. Definitely understand why you are having wrist pain in the first place with a doctor before trying to actually fix the issue (I get this video is entertaining in nature, you said it yourself you weren't really giving them a fair shake as it usually takes months to get used to an ergo board).
Hipyo, the ergo mech boards are amazing. I started with a Lily 58, upgraded to a ZSA moonlander, and just this week I upgraded again to a Dygma Defy (wireless FTW). As long as you're a decent touch typist you can get the hang of things and with the layers I already have my numpad under my right hand with a simple thumb press. I will gladly admit though that they have a bit of a learning curve.
I got a keychron v10 and it’s great because it’s the only « cheap »custom ergo keyboard with a azerty iso fr layout and that’s nice ! Honestly the transition to an alice layout was very natural and i got less pain when typing with it which is AMAZING. BUUUT I STILL GOT A PAIN. I also type faster and that’s cool i think I’m gonna change my switches because i think 4mm is too much total travel for linear switches
Did you put Ctrl, Alt, and Shift on your home row when testing the Ergo Dox? Did you work with Custom defined layers? For me, that's what made ergonomic keyboards being a game changer for me. Sure, on the first day I was down to 9wpm, but now I am back to 60-70 wpm. The homerow modifiers though. (chefs' kiss). Also with custom layers I could move opening brackets ( ) to jkl-, I moved the num pad under my right hand ( 123 = m,. 456 = jkl 789 = uio ), and organized F1 - F9 in the same way. Of the keyboards you tested, the ErgoDox is probably the best. You should put the 2 parts really far apart. Like at least at the distance of your shoulders. Then put your mouse in the middle. Once you started it will still take at least a week until you feel really comfortable with the new keyboard layout, but I found it to be worth the investment. I type much more comfortably today, I have full control over my keyboard layout (which means I can change aspects of it at any time I see fit) and I even managed to actually learn how to touch type (which I had huge problems with before). I use the piantor keyboard, though. It's an even smaller keyboard than the ErgoDox with only 42 keys.
This dude's checklist must've looked like: - Make content on ergonomic keyboards. - Talk about the switches and how it sound for the whole video L video...
I recently switched to the Keychron Q11. I loved that while I adjusted, i had the option to fit the sides back together if i needed to got back to a default set up. I love a split space bar (for sound purposes) and being able to angle my wrists in a more comfortable manner has been wonderful.
As someone who has been using ergo keyboards for a while, here is my take: (for reference: I am using a zsh moonlander, which is an improved version of the ergo-docs, the use of which was recommended to me by my doctor because of my RSI) First of all, learning indeed takes time, and, at first, they will feel worse. This is because, when you're not familiar with a layout, your hands tense up more, which is the opposite of what you want. The entire point of these keyboards is to minimise strain. For me, it took roughly a month of continuous use to get get to a point I was noticing the benefits over my previous keyboard. I was in uni at the point, but most people I know who switched did so during a quiet summer month at work. They are also no use without a good posture. The split nature allows you to sit in a more ergonomic way (arms down, making a straight bend at your elbows, with your hands at the same width as your shoulders. while sitting up straight,) but do not provide that posture on their own. On a similar note, you should place the mouse in between the boards, not to the side of it. Then, imo more importantly: the target audience. Most if not all people I know who use the more extreme ergonomic keyboards (like, a dozen) are all software developers, usually the type that also use Emacs/nvim (which includes myself.) I have heard that some people who write large amounts of text also use them, and I appreciated my board while working on my thesis, but that's not what most people use it for. I think this is largely because the ergo keyboards do not make a lot of sense if you switch to your mouse all the time anyway. To feel the advantage, you should really use keyboard shortcuts for everything and generally keep your hands at the home row at all times. That is at least what they are optimised for. Gaming is possible, but most people have separate layers on their keyboard for it, or even use their old non ergo keyboards. The less different ergo boards (like the Logitech ERGO K860), are found more frequently in offices of general work, and are better suited for people not willing to make a big switch, but those are all membrane boards, as far as I know. As for what keyboards I would recommend: If you got recently diagnosed with RSI or a similar, I have heard good things about the Logitech ERGO K860. It is not an enthusiast board, but it takes around a week to get used to, and you will quickly start to feel the pain in your wrists get better. However, note that they won't accomplish anything without a good ergonomic posture, and it would be advised to get your boss to pay for a doctor that specialises in ergonomic working. For the more extreme ergo boards, or generally if you want to play around on your own without the urgency of a medical problem, my favourites are the moonlander and the knesis advantage 360. They do not sound or feel as good as enthusiast keyboards (tough I have seen people mod them quite well with foam and different switches and all that,) but the ergonomics of them are great. The one thing I will say is that they are only as valuable as the time you put in. If you simply use a qwerty layout with numbers on top, modifiers to the side, the difference is not that large, only really helping your posture. However, if you do more extreme things. (for example, I use home-row mods, which is to say that a long press of a, s, d, and f or ;, l, k, and j, result in super, alt, shift and control respectively. This massively reduced the strain on my pinky from pressing control and shift. Moreover, my numbers are a numpad underneath u,i,o,j,k,l,m,,,., to be accessed with a modifier, which makes me reach less for the top of the keyboard, and allows the hands to keep a more natural position.) The better you want it to be, the more you have to change from what is familiar, the more time you need to spend learning it. Other boards for this I have heard good things about are the kyria, Iris, Chocofi, Piantor, and glove80. All of these are going to be hard to get into. So, in short, hypyo, I get why you don't like them, you are not the target audience in more ways than one. They are not meant to sound good, and they are not meant to be easy to learn. I feel like you evaluated a fish on its ability to climb a tree. On a different note, something that I would be interested in, is seeing you mod one of these keyboards to make it sound good (probably the moonlander, as that is the only common hot-swap one.) tough zsh do not care about sound (literally saying that on their website,) that does not mean no users do. For the users of these keyboards, it is an interesting tutorial, whereas for the majority that does not use them can see how a board that is good, but simply not optimised for sound, can be made to sound better, with I'm pretty sure a big difference before and after, knowing what others have achieved.
If you are going to try to really do ergo you should probably try something smaller or at the very least something with a smaller thumb cluster to get used to it (personally I use a Lily58). Start with the two halves as close together as you can get them and really work on your finger placement, I find that Ergo keyboard can be quite unforgiving if you don't have correct/perfect touch typing. As you get more comfortable with typing you can move the two halves further apart (and eventually move your mouse into the middle), and then introduce tenting. I'd probably also look into getting wrist rests, though you'd probably need to get two short wrist rests (I 3d printed wrist rests into my tenting wedges for my Lily58 but being printed they are a bit too hard). One issue I ran into when I first started with my Ergo keyboard was that I had needed to improve my whole setup. Just changing your keyboard isn't going to help too much if everything else about your setup isn't set ergonomically, I had to change my chair hight and the height of the chair's arms to suit my desk (I wish I had a motorised sit/stand desk!) and reorganise stuff on my desk before I really starting to enjoy using my Lily58. You should also look into changing layers and key placements, I still need to move my backspace and my enter onto my direct thumb keys, but moving the 'p' key onto the homerow was a godsend! Perfecting your ergo keyboard takes a while to get right, and it will be such a pain at first, but after a couple of weeks it will get so much better. Also, full split keyboards, like the first one, are actually quite good for gaming as you can move the right hand half out of the way and it gives your mouse more desk space.
Except for the Feker Alice 98, that one isn't worth buying: they have chronic manufacturing issues with the ribbon cables bridging the 3 internal PBC boards, so right out of the box the number pad won't work and the rest of the keys will randomly spew 2 key presses instead of the key you hit. You can fix it by popping open the case (literally: it is an all plastic body that clips together instead of using screws, so you have to pry it apart) and then reseat all 6 of the ribbon cables. But even after it is physically functional, the driver software for it is garbage & antivirus programs flag it as a Trojan. The sad part (outside of paying nearly $200 & then having to wait 5 weeks for a dysfunctional product) is that it is the most comfortable physical layout and contouring of the keys that I have ever used.
@@fastfolky I like both equally for different reasons. The Feker has more foam and a quieter dampened case sound. I tried Durock Lupine and Epomaker Sea Salt Silent switches in both. With the macro keys and Lupine switches I have my forever home board. With the incredibly muted case and Sea Salt Silent switches in the Feker I have a whisper quiet wireless board for the office. It is much quieter than the Nuphy Air 75. I can take notes during a meeting and you can't hear case ping, bottom out, switch noise or anything else.
If you struggle to type on an alice layout like I first did, you have bad typing habits built up and never learned how to traditionally touch type using the home row.
I use a ZSA Moonlander, still keeping my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard and here's how I learned to use it. When you order a moonlander and it ships, it says it'll give you a free typing game if you reply on why you wanted the keyboard in the first place, and I did just that and got the code to play Epistory, it was a blast and how i simply learned to type on the main letters. And if not, it has a training program there so you can learn how to use the Moonlander. Even ZSA (the same guys who made the Ergodox, now selling the EZ version) knows how how bizarre thier keyboards are, so kudos for that. P.S. I already see the glaring issue when you try the keyboards, is at least one of them has a wrist rest, none of them are tented (supposedly 45 to 60 degrees) and those things are pretty important for ergonomic split keyboards to prevent wrist pain.
First things first if your hands and arms hurt after a while before even switching keyboard try building better habits/get a better chair. Your elbows and wrists are both floating in some clips. Wrist floating is good, that's a good habit, but you have to use your arm/elbows to have an "anchor" for the floating not to tire your arm faster, chairs fix that. And trying to use ergo boards without touchtyping/homerow typing won't do anything, if you don't start by fixing your typing habits, getting a board designed around better typing habits will only feel worse, idk what you expected and why you went in and bought keyboards first... Except for making content, of course : ^)
Great video! People should see that the learning period is super frustrating. Many ergo enthusiasts find the frustration is usually tolerated because the pain relief comes pretty quickly when you find your fit. I'm all about the kinesis advantage 360. BUT it isn't hot swap switches and requires some modding (that I haven't done yet but want to soon) to help the sound. My 2nd fav is the moonlander since I could customize it more. For me, the split keyboard opens up my posture and relieved my shoulder pain. My biggest issue was wrist pain, and that wasn't better until I used a tented keyboard. Turns out, rotating my wrist to type on a flat keyboard is what was killing my wrists. The concave layout of the kinesis helps with finger fatigue but generally speaking I find that the key is to place your hands more intentionally on top of the keyboard rather than anchoring the wrists at the bottom of the keyboard and stretching your fingers to reach the rest of the keys. Not sure if the way I said that makes sense but hopefully you get the point. I'll admit the columnar layout also had my fingers tired until but I also found it to be more intuitive and feel better after a couple hours of use. The best advice I heard was that the ergo journey takes time to get used to it and it comes in phases. Phase 1 is breaking the old muscle memory and getting used to the new ergo layout. Phase 2 is realizing you are worse at ergo AND normal layouts so it can get a little demoralizing. Phase 3 is good at ergo layout, still rough at regular. Then finally the last phase is finding yourself equally fast as before, or even faster at both ergo and regular. I can feel myself barely getting to the last phase after several months, but my daily pain is now very rare. Worth it.
Echoing a lot of other comments here: I've been using a Moonlander keyboard for a couple years at this point and it's been life-changing. I think the biggest thing that helped me out was tilting the halves up as far as they can go (and then later getting 3d-printed bases that tilted them farther), so that i didn't have to flatten my wrists out to reach the keyboard. It's the same principle as a vertical mouse, something i personally swear by.
It's disappointing that this video will probably turn some people off of ergonomic keyboards. Your first priority shouldn't be the appearance of your keyboard, it should be your health - please trust me on that before you get RSI and have no choice anymore. I've owned and used an ergodox and truly ergonomic (the first two in the video) for years each, and they're both good. I'd recommend looking at a keyboardio, though, like the model 100. It's a better built, more ergonomic keyboard, with a nice wooden case, sculpted keys that fit your fingers' natural positions, and easy tenting. And please consider a good finger trackball, or at least a vertical mouse.
Argue about how they keyboard looks with a young person or someone who is trying to cope and accept their situation so they don’t feel depressed about it.
Ergonomic keyboards make sense when your writs/hand starts to hurt or go numb. I've been a moonlander user for about 2 years now and my wrist/hand pain went away a few months into using one. That being said, if you're going to something that moves away from the staggered format you're going to have a big learning curve; think it was about a month of practice before I felt even reasonably proficient. The level of customization offered by the moonlander at least is fantastic, layers, multifunction keys. Initially it feels clunky and yeah your hand gets sore, all the reaches are different than what you are accustomed to. This goes away after a couple weeks of use or at least it did for me.
This video is a disservice to people that might benefit from ergo. One day for one keyboard is not putting any effort into this. This video is a waste, just entertainment at best, and at most, misleading people away from something that might help them. They aren't meant to be FUN the yare meant to help your wrists.
I'm very happy with my Mistel Barocco as my travel keyboard. The biggest upside is that when I use it with my laptop I can lay it behind the screen, which is a HUGE improvement in hand posture compared to normal laptop keyboard sadness.
I've just switched from my trusted old Leopold FC660M to a Keychron Q11 and I think that's the most sane switch one could do. It get's even better after a few days. And also kudos to Keychron, the Q11 with the Gateron Reds sounds phenomenal!
It’s fine that people don’t want to switch, but this is just uninformed bashing and as spreading misinformation. 1. Clickbait title you say you would try for 1 week, only did a day. 2. His channel lives on reviewing traditional keyboards. 3. Switching would just make people value his opinion on regular keyboard less. 4. Says his open to try something new, but whines about it being different. The end result is less people trying new things that could help them, for example people with RSI can attest to. All for a few more clicks. Disclaimer he has valid points with price to quality ratios it is very expensive.
That hot docs transition to howdy hey got me, amazing! I've just ordered by first keyboard after watching many of your vids. Great content eh, keep up the entertaining keyboard commentary.
This was the most disingenuous take on ergo-keyboards on all of youtube. You could simply be outright facetious instead of peddling this sham of a "my honest experience" type of video.
I use the keebio iris with a tented setup, Hipyo should give it a try. It is a split ortholinear though, so it might take a bit longer of getting used to. Because it's tented so your wrist is not forced into a horizontal plane, and more to a slightly more angled feel.
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how is this comment 9 hours ago
🤔
Kinda confused you didn't try the Akko Alice in the video. It's really budget and it's quite good!
Keychron q11 / q14?
e
Ironic how you are doing the same thing here as that journalist in the "Journalists Don't Understand Custom Keyboards..." video
This guy got deep ties with the industry. A lot of ergonomic keyboards are open source, so I think you will never see a fair take on a channel like this.
@@pred4507 that's indeed true. I was seeing this video and asking myself: why this guy made a "ergo keyboards" video without trying any of the keebs actually used by the community (corne sofle, etc).
@@pred4507 yeah, the mechanical keyboard cabal is known for it's deep pockets...
I've been using only ergo boards for a bit over two years at this point. Most of us that have gotten into ergo boards didn't get into it because we wanted a keyboard that sounded good but we needed some type of change in order to use a keyboard without our hands dying. I use a 36 key split CRKBD layout and am able to type comfortably at about 130wpm throughout the day while working.
I feel like harping on the boards feel initially is a little bit out of the spirit of what ergo boards are trying to accomplish. I also totally understand the learning curve that you have to go through in order to use an ergo board efficiently. It doesn't help that you don't touch type with your right hand, so a change in layout would be a lot harder to manage. Gaming is also not the greatest benchmark for using an ergo board. While it's possible, I find it a lot easier to have a separate left-hand gamepad so that I can have all the keys I need for gaming and then being able to go back to the ergo board when I need to type for work and personal stuff.
It might have just been me, but I felt that your take on the whole ergo board topic was biased towards sound and switch feel when those aren't even the priority of the boards. I'd love to see you revisit this topic without harping on the boards for feel when that's not the primary goal for the boards.
I think that's totally fair, I took it with my approach to what I value in keyboards.
The way Hipyo evaluated these boards is fair in that it's the same value assessment he provides in his reviews, and shows there is a wide range of experiences from boards that all claim to be ergonomic which is good consumer information.
But yes, I agree that this video could unfairly discussed some from exploring economic options.
In my opinion, ergonomic setups should start with a seated postural analysis as it's foundation and once that is optimized you can start picking the gear that best suits you. Someone in pain should rightfully treat this as a chronic condition and not just personal preference in peripherals ( blanket statement, I'm not accusing anyone of doing so).
Even if you choose to hire an ergonomist to do the analysis for you, it could be well worth the money in the long run.
Great video
And to the original commenter, well written and very informative, thank you.
@@HipyoTech One other thing I can suggest (as I put in my own comment), is that ones that let you reprogram how they work should be reprogrammed to help you with what you actually do. The thing is, these shortcuts may not help at all during a typing test, such as AWSD arrowkey remapping and what not.
That, and some of the keyboards you were using were using the ortholinear setup, which I've tried and I personally hate, despite it being vetted as "the most ergonomic." Over a week will absolutely not cut in becoming used to that layout, let alone a split keyboard setup.
That being said... you do have a 3D printer now... maybe look into the crazy world of custom ergonomic nightmares.
@HipyoTech IMO, a big part of coming to love ergo boards is the part where you get a cessation of pain.
@@jamesmendoza4058 but that's not why ppl buy (or even get interested in) this kind of boards in the first place!
I feel like the video should be renamed,
from: I Tried "Ergonomic" Keyboards
to: I "Tried" Ergonomic Keyboards
You ever hear that saying about judging a fish by it's ability to climb a tree? Yeah, that's a little like judging ergonomics by the sound the switches make and their gaming ability. Jumping to ortholinear or column staggered, as others have noted, is a lot to adjust to. It's not like relearning a new layout, but it is a lot. But it's necessary to adjust to if you're going to fairly evaluate the setup. Judging the boards you usually make videos on by the standards of ergonomic factors would result in an equally awful outlook. I mean, who builds a custom keyboard without a thumb cluster, or even a split spacebar?
You realize that there are many gamers which happens to need orthotic tools such as keyboards due to injuries or other disroders.
@@C3yl0what does that have to do with the point of the comment? the comment is saying judge the ergo keeb by ergo standards not by sound.
This video is like reviewing a mug to dig the ground. You're just reviewing a product based on what it's not designed to do.
>use split keyboard for ergonomic reasons
>doesn't push them far enough apart to actually have shoulders and elbows relaxed
Also, you sit with your desk too high, and you're defaulting to raised wrists, which would work with a high rest, but hovering is definitely putting strain on them.
And also doesn't know how to correctly type. Ortho-columnar keyboards enforce the correctly placement of the fingers and this dude doesn't correctly align to the home row, doesn't use the pinkies and almost doesn't use the ring fingers. This was flawed from the beginning...
@@OctaviusPelagius this guy is dogshit at typing lmao
This whole video is a lazy, brain dead excuse to buy 3 keyboards
- Goes to learn swimming
- Gives up on day 1
- Blames water
Why would you make a whole video about trying ergonomic keyboards but not bother to actually learn how to use them to get the benefit?
To show the perspective of people comming into them.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE for the love of your wrists try an ergonomic keyboard that TENTS. Tenting alters your resting wrist position. I highly recommend the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard or UHK, with the wrist rests and thumb cluster addon. I really appreciate the split left and right style because you can pull them farther apart and keep your shoulders wide open and relaxed.
Oh, and you should try lowering your desk. It’s too high, so your elbows and forearms can’t get a healthy 90 degree angle.
Watching your hands try to type on these things says a lot about if an ergo board is going to work well or not. You're moving hands all around the keyboards like they have no home-row or resting position. It also seems like you're heavily reliant on your index fingers to push keys that are supposed to be pushed by other fingers. I had a lot of these problems and they're actually why I forced myself to switch. The difficulty of learning meant I would have the chance to correct my typing style at the same time at what was essentially no extra cost. Being able to type fast was not the point of home-row for typing, and being able to type fast using a wonkey method doesn't make that method a good idea for regular use.
The point behind split boards is about keeping your shoulders and arms on the same plane, rather than having them tilt inward, and then your wrists tile outward. All of your arms should be following the same through-line the whole way, so even if you position the keyboard halves inward, at least tilt the halves so that your wrists aren't bending. On a similar note, your chair is too low in reference to the desk, your forearms should be roughly parallel with the floor, not inclined upwards. Your chair back is also way too far back and isn't properly supporting you during a lot of the typing footage here. Your hands should float above the keyboard over a centralized home, and your wrists should never be below your hands. Until you fix a bunch of these things no amount of ergo is going to help you because you are cancelling out ever bit of potential good with these things. Its entirely possible that you'd be fine without ergo if you fixed these things. Additionally, changes like ergo aren't going to immediately make you feel better, most of your pain is likely from damage caused by typing the way you have been, and you need to let that damage have time to heal. Ergo helps reduce the injuries' being caused, but itself is not a magical healing technique.
In regards to keyboards
Max-Ergo but You Essentially Relearn to Type: Dactly Manuform or its more commercial variant: AmHatsu, Kinesis Advantage,
Ergo with adjustment time - ZSA Moonlander, Atreus-like boards
This barely counts as Ergo - Keychron Q11
So much of the ergo space is DIY stuff right now because companies don't want to make the huge investment into making these boards and hoping that they appeal to enough people. When it comes to a niche sub-community like ergo-mech, maybe you should have asked someone about ergo stuff before you published something like this. I know you said you're not going in as an expert, but you went in so blind that you not only didn't have a good sample of the boards that are out there, but you also failed to utilize the ones you had in front of you in a way that might have actually given you some benefit.
That all said... yeah that 2nd board looked pretty trash.
Second keyboard definitely 🚮 🗑️ for HR to appease a complaining employee
I 90% agree. Most of your points are spot on.
Where I disagree is the same reason my gaming setup was more comfortable and relaxing to my mom than her expensive supposed ergonomic injury specialist setup:
*Locking into a position isn't good for our bodies.*
One of the biggest health benefits of martial arts is simply moving around and building a healthy core.
A healthy home position for a repetitive task is good - but *the best shoes in the world won't fix the cashier's problem of standing in a small place for too long.* Our bodies aren't mean to be static. They are meant to move, stretch, flex, circulate.
*If the position requires you to constantly hold up your own weight - that's referred to as **_fatiguing._* Long periods of fatigue lead to the body _compensating._
So an actually ergonomic setup should allow for some flexibility, several ways to relax and change position and still be comfortable. Your chair should have a neck rest. You should be able to move a little to the left or to the right, moved forward or back, leaned forward or back, and still be pretty comfortable. Your chair should be able to rotate, so you can limber your shoulders a bit.
Also, most ergonomic keyboards seem to totally ignore that people have multiple types of computer tasks. Typing text is _one_ of them. But take an accountant for example. That's minimal compared to the numpad and mouse use. Is that keyboard _'ergonomic'_ for 1 hand typing? No, they are usually actively worse. Accountants are a common group for computer ergonomic injuries, and most 'ergonomic' keyboards are actively broken ergonomics for their use.
Most of their ergonomic problems could be solved with a sawzall. Chop the legs of that desk, throw away the keyboard tray and foot stool.
@@MaintDocsand @XeroShifter, hat tip for two incredibly detailed, nuanced, and helpful comments. You two deserve many internet points.
Thank you all in this comments thread, thank you so much for putting the time to share your knowledge and experience in a place where even if there is not much exposure, it really did something good. Hopefully more people interested in the topic see your comments, and again, thanks for taking the time and sharing these comments!
"I've been doing this for 3 days now"
You're literally re-learning to ride a bike ... this needs more time.
It took me over a month to start being productive with my Kinesis and almost half a year to become fully comfortable with it.
Okay so I have a few keyboard recommendations and also some tips on how to select a good one and actually use one efficiently (both health and work wise). First off you probably don't want to go for a flat keyboard, key layout and split designs are important factors but there's a bit more to it than that. Preferably you want something that inclines slightly upward towards your wrists (negative tilt) so your wrists are positioned slightly higher (elevation-wise) and your fingers are resting naturally on the keyboard, with this you generally want some sort of wrist rest so your wrists will be properly elevated and most ergo keyboards come with them (except for that last expensive one idk what the point of that one was lol). Another factor is tenting, most good ergo boards will be raised in the center so your wrists/hands can be more naturally angled instead of totally flat.
Other than that make sure you're sitting properly and your arms/hands aren't in any awkward angles, if you have a split keyboard you have more control/customization on where you want your hands to be (though it will give you significantly less mouse space if they're positioned too far away from each other). For keyboards I use a fairly cheap one that I highly recommend but I'm sure you can afford better. I use a cloud nine ergoTKL which does all the things I listed with the main caveat that you can't replace the switches as they're not hot-swappable. For the really nice expensive ones I recommend either the Kinesis Advantage360 or the ZSA Moonlander, the Moonlander you'll probably prefer as it's the only one hot swappable to my knowledge.
If you ever want to take another look at the first keyboard I would recommend seperating the two halves further apart. The main benifit of thos is the ability to spread them further apart, generaly to where your arms are at shoulder width. It definately does take getting used to, especially with those button clusters next to the thumbs (I've never had one with the thumb cluster).
yeah as someone who has a split keyboard... the whole point of it is to... split them apart to shoulder width. I'm also surprised that there is no tenting on that Ergodex, like, having your palms face exactly downwards is not going to be good, no matter what kind of keyboard you're using.
And not just spread apart, but also turn at the convenient angle. The only actually ergonomic keyboard was tossed at the bin ).
edit: pharasing.
Keychron has a split board that has a typical layout (staggered keys vs the keys vertically aligned) so it’ll feel much more natural to type on. For me, it’s been a complete game changer for shoulder and wrist pain (also a climber here). It’s plug & play, customization through VIA, so much easier to start using and customize. You can use just one half or the other at a time if you like, so plenty of space for gaming.
Total fan of the Keychain Q10
Keychron, the GOAT!!
V10 is great too
Q8 is also Alice layout. Surprised it wasn't in the video.
You should probably rephrase the, "... typical layout (staggered keys vs the keys vertically aligned," portion for those who don't know better as it'll just lead to misconceptions, for the purposes of clarity and correctness. What you refer to as 'typical' is an uneven row stagger, +0u/+0.5u/+0.75u/+1.25u on the alphanumeric core, notice the inconsistency of the intervals that exaggerates the top and bottom stagger of the four alphanumeric rows; as opposed to the much rarer even row stagger. What you refer to as 'vertically aligned' is a columnar stagger, which can come in both even and uneven staggers depending on the board. Even stagger often comes as an isometric [equilateral triangular] grid, but even interval stagger, +0xu/+1xu/+2xu/+3xu on the alphanumeric core, can also exist on a skewed grid such as one based on a parallelogram with a horizontal base and a diagonal of θ°. Where there can be confusion can appear, and further misconception, is with the loose use of 'vertically aligned' also being applicable to ortholinear; which is also horizontally aligned just like your 'typical' board otherwise is (by your phrasing, 'typical' could also be 'horizontally aligned' with no further designator) but without stagger, forming a true square grid. The issue with potential misconception is that a person who does not know better will inevitably believe that A=B=C when that's not entirely true, this is why there are specific terms to better differentiate things into discrete categories. Then you have things like Alice/Arisu which are typically a modified horizontal stagger that introduces a bend into the grid pattern. Then furthering that you also have different sculpts, like the typical flat with potential for tilt adjustment and potential of having profiled keys, positive sculpting like the Surface Sculpt and alternatives (Logi makes one, I'm not sure who else does), and negative sculpts like the MoErgo Glove80 and similar halfpipe-like boards do, then tented boards end up brute forcing their way into the sculpted category, especially when they have adjustable thumb clusters. Things are more complex than just 'typical vs non-typical [a binary system] (along with bad, misleading, incorrect, and/or incomplete wording, naming, and/or phrasing),' and thus the need for use of proper terms and descriptors because there's a legitimate range of what's possible and what's available.
I'm really disappointed with this video, it's like the only research you did was whatever sponser/pr boards you found in your closet. Logically you should've tried the boards in reverse order, starting with the one most like a regular keyboard. This feels like a soft hit piece on ergo keebs. Ergo keyboards can be beneficial to people with wrist/elbow, videos like this don't highlight any of those features. Instead you only focused on your own frustration, inconveniences and laziness. You can do better.
Sorry it wasn't what you expected. But this showcased my genuine first impressions and experiences with them. Not every consumer has weeks or months to dedicate to research on the topic and my experience could be similar to theirs.
@@HipyoTech you don't need to do months of research to find affordable and accessible ergonomic keyboards. Literally a Google search would've shown you a microsoft/Logitech keyboards for less than $100. Even the kinesis advantage is less than $200. Not of all us get sent $700 keebs. You're being disingenuous at best.
Probably because he had no ergo keyboard sponsors . . . Look how he'll change his point of view once he gets one
Guitarist tries playing piano for one day and declares it's a horribly inferior instrument: "I can't even see the strings".
To answer your question: I think when you’re a software developer in your early 30s and have a joint disorder you kind of have no choice other than becoming an “ergonomics person”. For some people it’s going to be worth the retraining but one might argue maybe we should just design keyboards with ergonomics in mind so when kids use them for the first time it’ll just be training and not retraining 😅
Have you ever tried the glove80? I’m curious how it would be because it looks hard to get used to but also might be a grail keyboard ⌨️
Dished key wells are perfection, anyone that says otherwise is delusional.
Other than the keyboards themselves, I think to get the most out of ergonomic setup , you could also adjust your desk/chair height, arm rest angle/height, monitor height/angle. If mech keybs are a rabbit hole, ergonomic anything is an entirely new rabbit hole just as much, maybe even more...
I'd go 3 steps further and say, your desk height and a good chair matter way more than your keyboard.
To get the most out of the Ergodox, you have to use the optional tilt feet and wrist wrests and then play with hand positioning.
I'm not as in depth as the other folks here in their descriptions, but I did wanna say I don't think 3 days is enough time to get used to a ergo keyboard, considering you've practiced typing on a normal keyboard your entire life.
Based on your hand placement on a normal layout, I think and ergonomic keyboard with staggered columns (like the Ergodox) could work well for you but, you would need to unlearn resting your pinky on shift. That's probably what made your left wrist hurt. On a standard keyboard, your left hand position makes sense because it lets you rest your hand in a more comfortable position. Layouts where the columns are staggered are meant to make it easier to rest your fingers on the homerow while maintaining a similar hand position. But, in your case it meant reaching further than you're used to to rest your pinky on shift.
Hello I'm one of those ergo people. I've used exclusively ergo boards for about a year and a half, corne 36 key.
- I think you went into this with the wrong goal. If you have any pains you need to understand where they are coming from before you start trying to fix them. The ergo section on the reddit mech keyboard discord has a ton of resources that can help you.
- Any extended use on a new layout is going to hurt a bit at first just because you are doing a bunch of new finger movements.
- As im sure many others have said 1 day is not enough time to learn a new layout.
- You only used full sized key caps and switches. Something a little closer to a laptop key might be better for you since there is less finger travel on each press.
Now the real question is can you make good content with that? That might be tricky. You definitely were on to something with the lack of build quality on a lot of ergos. The mass produced office worker ones are pretty bad. While the more common hobbiest ones are of the exposed pcb and acrilic sandwitch variety. A lot of ergos definitely go for the function over form. Might be worth checking out Ben Vallack's videos a pretty stunning ergo keyboard.
I usually really like your vids and I still found the jokes funny, but the hard content part of this was hard to watch. Poorly researched hot takes on a topic that deserves better attention (health).
Well said. I would sub but every time one of these videos comes up it feels like the thesis or problem was ignored 1/3rd of the way in.
Try the Charybdis nano or the corne (aka Crkbd)
brainlet take here
@@arcdrop2103 “here” marked the spot
He said in the first two minutes that he didn’t research and everything is his opinion lol
One of the problems I see is that you don't type correctly on a normal keyboard. That is one of the reasons that you found it so hard to switch to a columnar layout. You should rest your fingers on A, S, D, F, J, K, L, ; . You had your ring on A which is wrong. So you're not just learning the different positions for the keys. You're also learning different letters for different fingers.
If you are really interested in reducing arm and wrist pain (and you should be. RSI can be crippling) then you should set up the ergodox with tenting to reduce supination and the correct angle to reduce ulnar deviation. Then switch to a completely different layout that is not QWERTY (something like whorf). That way you can spend some time each day learning that board and the new layout, but then still be able to go back to work using your old keyboard and qwerty. You will be able to keep both layouts in your head. Then when you feel you are up to a decent speed on the new layout and keyboard then switch full time. I switched to an ergo split mech keyboard at the start of working from home in 2020. It has saved my wrist and arms so much pain.
I use ergo for work and a normal full size for non work and have been doing this for over 10 years. The main benefit of the ergo are the ones that allow you to tip the keyboard away from you. Microsoft and Logitech are good for this.
You can't evaluate an ergonomic keyboard based on only 7 days' use. It takes at least 3-4 weeks to adjust muscle memory, etc., and as others have pointed out, it makes a big difference if you're a touch typist or hit keys in a random, self-taught fashion (not naming names). 14:30 pretty much says it all.
I switched to ergonomic keyboards 30+ years ago due to an RSI in my left wrist. As I was standing in the office supply store looking at the various keyboards, my left wrist in a brace and in pain, a lady came up, looked at my brace and said, "Get yourself an ergonomic keyboard if you want to avoid pain the rest of your life. I had *two* RSI's -- one in each wrist -- and an ergonomic keyboard saved me. Just try this: Drop your hands to your sides, then just raise your elbows and see where your hands and fingers are." I did, and realized the shape and curvature of my hands and wrists were NOT the shape and (lack of any) curvature of a straight keyboard. The lady told me it would take me about 3-4 weeks to adjust, and my typing would be slow and awkward, but once I got used to it, I'd never go back. She was 1000% correct.
One caveat: You have to find the right *combination* of ergonomic features for you. I wanted to try mechanical keyboards, so I got a Keychron V10 Max 75% Alice layout ("ergonomic"). Well, after one week I'm now sitting here with my left elbow in pain due to either the lack of tenting (the raise in the middle, or dome in the case of keyboards like the MS Sculpt, etc.) or the higher keycaps after using chiclet keys for several decades. I'm typing this on my MS Sculpt again and my elbow isn't bothering me, except for the lingering pain caused by the flat Alice keyboard and/or the taller keycaps. I really, really loved the sound and feel of the V10 Max, but my fingers kept getting caught on the keys due to my ergonomic touch-typing style (my fingers move as little as possible, in a more horizontal direction). So now I'm hoping to find a mechanical keyboard that's split low profile, so I can tent the middle. (My MS Sculpt is ancient and may die at any time, but Microsoft discontinued them and who knows when incase will be releasing them. Plus it's a membrane keyboard, so there's that.) There's no "one size fits all" when it comes to ergonomic keyboards.
Tbh the biggest barrier to entry for most people, not just Keyboard enthusiasts, is learning proper touch typing techniques.
Ergo boards are made for standard touch typing, so if you search and peck or you use a personal version of touch typing, you’ll struggle.
I used to type with angle mod, using ring finger with P, and with my left hand. And even just by swapping to 40% I had to fix my technique.
And as for Ergo boards: I haven’t used it yet but the Corne and Dactyl seem like EKB community favorites, but they are all very extreme changes for your everyday person. For a person new to ergo boards, the Ultimate Hacker Keyboard (UHK) and Dygma Raise look like solid choices since those two are essentially just normal keyboards cut in half, with the Raise even being able to come back together if I recall.
Also, something else of note: Keyboard sound is still sort of important in the Ergo community, but the thing far more focused on is layout. Traditional boards are separated by feel and sound. On the other hand, Ergo boards like to change and experiment with where keys are placed, how they’re placed, and sometimes even how they work.
I mean yeah, if you don’t know how to type properly, you’re gonna have a hard time with any of these keyboards. Watching you use your ring finger for so many keys made me physically ill
Why even bother spending hours, days learning a new layout though? Unless the user is disabled and needs it
@@michaelsmitherian2484 to not become disabled, maybe.
I never even noticed till now that he does that, not that I suppose it ultimately matters with most keyboards, but ye, I could oly imagine you have a horrible experience with an ergonomic keyboard that expects you to type correctly
there's no proper way to type bro you're being arrogant af here.
@@Btterswt_gn there is a proper way to type.
It's interesting to see that you're maintaining rowstag (row stagger) hand positioning with the "ergo" boards.
With Colstag (column stagger, keys are vertically aligned), the major theory is that you do not need to move your fingers side to side and they mostly need to move straight up and down only (Pinky and index do, but the rest don't), reducing stress on the finger joints.
Next major thing is your wrists. In a lot of your clips, you're heavily angling your wrists to get into position. For the unibody boards (single piece ones), you should be moving the board closer or further from you until your hands are straight with your arms. For split boards, you move the halves such that each arm can be straight from your body, and again straight wrists. (Pro tip, mouse can go in the middle, or you can move the right half out of the way).
I considered split ergonomics for myself just for fun, since i came to the realisation that the way i position my hands more or less gave me Colstag movement.
The majority of ergo boards tend to be soldered sandwich kits as well. I think that's a bit different to your normal content, but if you're interested in trying ergos...
I recommend learning how to home row type before transitioning to an ergo or split board.
This took me personally about two weeks to learn on a regularly staggered keyboard with another two weeks to be at ~70WPM on my Idobao ID75.
Ergo isn't for everyone (I use a Raindrop 60% daily) but learning that first step is crucial to transition to an ergo board, especially with a columnar layout.
I think the consensus here is this is a bad take and warrants a follow up.
Love you Hipyo, keep making great content for this community!!
Thanks, but my take is basically that ergo isn't for everyone - if you pass a bunch of hurdles to appreciate it the correct way then I feel like my experiences here reflect that
I don't think this was in "bad faith", but you need to at least do some cursory research before dropping into ergonomic keyboards and how to use them.
The Microsoft Sculpt is probably actually the most popular ergo keyboard out there due to corporate environments issuing them for work. But for enthusiasts, you can have different types.
No mention of standard QWERTY staggered design vs Ortholinear or attempts to setup the split units for a tenting orientation... and all of this, while you are on an *adjustable height desk* and have not used that to reduce your wrist bending either. The last board you tested was the only one that added height that may have helped.
I'm gonna be honest this makes me take your other keyboard opinions with a much larger grain of salt because this really didn't go into the details I would expect from a channel basically dedicated to keyboards. This is not a fair review of any of these keyboards, because you zero-effort into understanding them. Think "LTT reviews RED Magic cameras" level of missing the mark.
I ❤ ergo keyboards, but it takes about two weeks to “get it” with a nice split ergo keyboard. I started with the Microsoft natural ergo board like 15 years ago and loved it. I moved on from there to the Kenisis Advantage 2 and loved that for years. I now go between my Keebio Iris and my Ferris Sweep. I love them both and with a bit of modding the Iris sounds and feels great.
Oh man, the og beige Microsoft ergo was the first keyboard I ever had all to myself. The number of hours I put on that thing in AIM and BBS days, plus Jedi Academy? What a great keyboard, membrane or no. I use an iKBC CD108 V2 now, but sometimes I really just want to hit up eBay and get back onto that exact board, PS2 connection and all.
I know someone who just recently switched to an ortholinear ergo keyboard. It started much the same way for him, he went from 110wpm to 20wpm. It didn't take him long to get back up to speed though, three hours of typing tests and he'd broken 100wpm with 100% accuracy.
Ergonomics isn't an instant change. It's something you have to let your body get used to, and there can be pains associated with it. This is something that can take weeks to months to do. Days, or even one week, isn't enough. I went through similar with my back, forcing myself to sit properly instead of slouching all the time. It wasn't great for a while, but after my body got used to it, I'll never go back.
I got a second hand Moonlander and it was still expensive. It took me several days to be semi decent at it. 8 months later I love it and am as uncomfortable on a regular keyboard now as I was on the Moonlander. A big positive for the split keyboard is to have my halves spread shoulder length apart, really helped with back and shoulder pain.
Ergo keyboards are unlikely to solve tennis/golf elbow issues, for anyone watching and wondering. If you have rheumatoid arthritis, or know specifically the issue is caused by forearm pronation or wrist hypertension, then an ergo board might help. Elbow and forearm issues caused by tennis elbow must be addressed by PT.
I like how Hipyo used the most uncomfortable stuff for years (justifying it with sound and "feel") and only now comes to the understanding that the proper ergonomic posture is when you don't hover your hands over a keyboard for 11 hours a day.
I'm seriously sick of people telling everyone that wrist rests are for your wrists to rest, while there's Microsoft Sculpt out there, and the design literally tells you to keep your wrists on it the whole time while your fingers are facing downwards.
I only decided to swap my Mx Keys from Keychron K5 Pro because I spilled some coffee on it. At first, I really struggled because it is still not low profile enough. Now I'm using a wrist rest that's higher than the keyboard by like a half-centimeter. It's okay, and I understand why it "feels" better + it's much better for gaming, but when I need to do a long long typing session, I usually get back to my barely working Mx Keys. It's just more comfortable.
Now, to the keyboard choices in this video. The guy clearly researched the top picks in the ergonomic space and then made sure he didn't buy those. I mean, where's Moonlander, where's Kinesis Advantage 2? This is a joke of a review.
good point
I had the same wrist pain and I went with the Dygma Raise with the Tenting Kit. I think you would really like it and the tenting may end up giving a different type of feel/relief than the models you tried! Good luck!
I am super excited to see somebody who actually cares about keyboard quality starting to look at ergo boards! There are VERY few places to get a board for someone who cares BOTH about keyboard aesthetics and quality AND about ergonomic posture.
However, I think you came to this challenge kind of backwards; the right way to start with ergo boards is to figure out how to hold your hands, then find a board that helps you hold your hand that way; not to get a bunch of random boards with "ergo" stickers on them and just kinda vibe it out. I have many, many thoughts and I hope you find some of these useful - I'd *love* it if these started getting more popular and those of us who need ergo boards got more varied options!
You want your hands to be a bit less than shoulder width apart, and for maximum ergonomics points, you want your wrist to be neutral: neither in flexion nor pronation, no scissoring of your radius and ulna. The reason that ergo keyboards are split is to facilitate that posture. The reason that some keyboards are ortholinear are to let your fingers move more naturally, but as you have discovered, learning an ortho layout is painful, and its ergo benefits are considerably more debatable than that of a basic split keyboard. I'd definitely start off with split staggered only, and maybe try out ortholinear layouts if you're *really* in the mood for a challenge, later. Separately. (Note that if you *really* hate yourself, you can get an ortholinear *non*-split keyboard, like the Idobao x YMDK ID75, or the very trendy "Work Louder: Creator Board")
I'd recommend checking out the offerings from Keeb dot io (no link because TH-cam seems to think all links are spam these days). They sell kits and prebuilts. Personally I'm a fan of low-profile boards, so I recently upgraded from the Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB (MX browns, soldered, boo) to the Keebio Cepstrum (choc v1 low profile, hotswap). This will take up a *very* small amount of space on your desk, if that's your main concern. If you want something in a more traditional form factor, the Mistel Barocco MD770 will give you something that snaps together to form a non-split keyboard so you can try it out a little bit at a time (sorry, no hotswap though). Note that the keebio options kinda *look* like they can fit together like the barocco, but they actually can't.
You should also find a model with a tenting kit, so that you can get a sense of how the "right" posture is supposed to be, particularly if your wrists are currently hurting. The kinesis freestyle rgb is not the best quality from a custom-keyboard perspective (it's plastic, it's pingy, it definitively does not thock as shipped), but if you get it with the tenting kit, you'll immediately get an idea of how to set it up with a wrist-rest and how you're supposed to hold your hands, and then you can graduate to some of the more custom options I listed above with your own tenting and wrist rests (or not, depending on what you find comfortable).
A lot of this is preference, but alice layouts are kind of a scam. The absolute most important thing for ergonomics is *hand separation*. Putting your hands together to sit at a keyboard physically forces you to hunch forward, so the halves of the keyboard really need to come apart, not just be angled. Position the two halves of the keyboard such that your hands will stay where you are if you fully relax them. If you relax your hands over a standard keyboard, you'll notice that your hands will sort of cross each other as your wrists straighten out. You want your wrists to be totally relaxed when using an ergo board.
Finally, although ergo keyboards can help, if your wrists *already hurt*, you need to take a break from typing for a while, or at least drastically cut back; the repetitive motion of pressing keys is not good for you regardless of how good your posture is, and once there's an injury you need to let it heal and stop poking at it. The thing that a good ergo setup does is mostly make it so that your wrists won't start hurting *again* once you've recovered.
This, hard agree. This video feels so awkward. Like he didn’t learn, didn’t try, and used them less than a day like it takes two weeks just to feel normal.
keebio has a lot of great entry boards with familiar layouts like the sinc or the kbo-5000.
Forget the weird key staggering on a lot of these ergonomic boards. Even just straightening out your wrist posture can do wonders. The advantage of split boards is that you can position each half to match your natural wrist angle and shoulder width.
If you pay attention to how your wrists/arms are when you're typing on a straight board, you'll see that you're wrists are (probably) always bent and your arms are tucked in towards the center to compensate. Keeping your wrists and arms straight is the key here and your tendons will thank you over time. You can take it even further by tenting if you really need it, but for me just the positioning change was a game changer.
I've been using a Microsoft Sculpt since 2018. It's awful for gaming but great for writing emails. They don't make them anymore but are allowing a company called In Case to make them. If you get one, try it with the raised base. It took me a couple of weeks to really learn the layout.
I would love to see what you would do with a Keebio Iris.
Loving mine for a while now. It can take some time to get used to, but customizability is what makes ergo boards work IMO. You can make the layouts and shortcuts YOU need. More buttons = more reach, so layers are better than a bigger board and QMK/VIA work great.
The Iris has been hotswap since Rev6. For a small company, having videos and clear, thorough documentation for everything is great. They were super nice for any questions, too.
This challenge kind of feels set up to fail. The decision not to do any kind of research on ergonomics beforehand is … I don’t know why you thought that was a reasonable approach. Without understanding the intent behind the design decisions, how did you intend to engage with them in any meaningful way? And a big chunk of where you gave up on the keyboards seems to be running into the entirely expected teething problems of needing to retrain muscle memory. It was well within expectations to require more than one day for typing to stop feeling wrong using a keyboard that wants you to change how your hands move or are held.
I think that ergonomic layouts, much like non-qwerty layouts, have a big personal motivation factor behind whether they work for a given person. If someone is really interested in making the switch and prepared to put in a bunch of effort, then they’ll probably be happy with the result. But if they aren’t really all that interested, then they really should stick with what they’re familiar with.
At home I use a Moonlander as my primary keyboard. Since I use a drawing tablet instead of a mouse, the “place the mouse between the halves” strategy works especially well because that’s exactly where I want to put the tablet in the first place.
The most common keyboards we recommended to clients were the Kinesis Freestyle 2, and the Goldtouch V2. In terms of ergonomics they are good tools for the job. In terms of premium feel, they're pretty standard but nothing special. *Also if you're having trouble you should really consider having an ergo assessment done. It looks like your desk might be a bit high relative to your chair but someone taking the time to go through this and the other contributing factors with you is a great investment in your health.
I think people who are interested in Kinessis and Goldtouch should also check out Nocfree's board. Similar price but true wireless.
First of all I want to congratulate you on even attempting an ergonomic keyboard. Many people find it far too intimidating.
It took me about two solid months to switch to an ergonomic keyboard. I needed to do this because I broke my wrist and couldn’t type for long periods of time with my right hand anymore. I started with the Ergodox EZ. One of the features of that keyboard is that you can tent it. I forget exactly which deviation this fixes, it might be ulnar deviation.
I ended up going very extreme with the tenting and type at about an 80% tent. I now use a Moonlander in addition to the Ergodox.
One other mistake I made is I should have learned the Colemak layout from the get-go rather than just switching to an economic keyboard in continuing to QWERTY.
I’m certainly not an expert but let me know if you have any questions particularly regarding the first ergo keyboard.
I switched to my Lily58 pretty decently. Was a slight struggle for less than a month, but after that I was good. I can also use normal keyboards perfectly fine when needed. I also started using workman layout before that and took me only a month or two to be basically the same. Was def a struggle at first but maybe almost a year or so later I type at almost double my old qwerty speed. Not a normal result, but I suppose I got to relearn typing better.
ergonomic keyboards and other accessibility input devices are game changers (and in fact make using computers or playing games possible at all for a lot of people. the fact that default keyboard layouts have so many ergonomic and accessibility problems does mean that there is unfortunately some learning associated. for anyone interested in improving their RSI or finding a more accessible input option, do some research and pick a layout you are interested in learning, get switches you will like, and expect learning to take time.
Thumb clusters & tenting alone are enough to reduce RSI, learning a new layout is just icing on the cake.
I'm really vibing with my V10. From regular 75% to alice was a couple days of adjustment to be comfortable with and a couple weeks to be back to full speed (it's not _that_ much different after all). Now I'm really liking it, it's forcing me to not type stupid, and the little inward angle is pleasant. This was a impulse purchase, and I came to it with no expectations, but I'm gonna have to say I slightly prefer this layout over regular 75%.
Your lack of ergonomic knowledge shows, no offense, but to the detriment of your viewers & the public knowledge in general -- it will only (possibly) feel better if you've already hit a severe position of damage with your joints & connective tissues in your wrist (or shoulders, neck).
Your ligaments etc. aren't innervated, so actually part of the problem of ergonomics when you DO have a chronic problem is that improvements you make don't give immediate feedback by virtue of decreased pain (ulnar deviation for example will inflame tissues in your wrist to the point that it DOES hurt).
Also split keyboards is just an initial part of an overall solution; once split you can tent, mount at your sides, tilt, etc. You can't do that until you go split.
As someone using ergo keyboards for over 3 years i got to say that it definitely has some learning curve. I think it would be best to try a split keyboard with wristrest that has the standard qwerty layout(no staggered or ortho). Recommend to keep the split keyboard shoulder width apart. Im using UHK v2. It would also be easier if you learned to touch type
I switched to an ergodox layout almost a decade ago and very much like it, but the retraining period was a solid 4-6 weeks to get back up above 100wpm - as you discovered it is in no way intuitive, but that's going to be true for anything that fights your learned muscle memory. After training was done I can switch between standard layout and ergodox with no issue, but during training switching will really mess you up on both.
But being able to keep the halves at shoulder-width separation really does help over time, and with tenting you can adjust positioning to exactly fit your posture. But if you're not really willing to do that retraining, a Kinesis Gaming Edge will get you like 80% of the benefits with a much more "normal" layout.
Maybe give the Keebio Splits a try. I built a KBO-5000, and it's a pretty good one (granted, I'm biased as it was my first I ever built).
EDIT: For me, an ergo keyboard is a must. So much of my time is typing for work, and when I completed my home office, I wanted a proper setup. A big thing with ergo keyboards, especially ones that allow reprogramming, is to come up with a setup that works for you. For me, I have a layer setup that maps AWSD to the arrow keys and JIKL to mouse movements. This lets me keep my hands on the keyboard for most of the time, and greatly improves my performance on ACTUAL work (results for typing tests will obviously not appear, since the shortcuts are useless for them).
I switched to a split ergo about 3 months ago and I ended up designing, printing, and hand wiring my own for $65. I've got a bad shoulder, so I need my hands spread farther apart then a standard keyboard allows. I also love that I can move the right half off to the side to make more room for the mouse. QMK also gives me a lot of flexibility for game specific layouts.
When it comes to "preference" Ergo keyboards are just custom keyboards with even more options. I'd suggest trying the ergo dox one more time, but slide the two halves to the far corners of your mouse mat. From there just do a typing test, and slowly adjust. it should take about 10-15 typing tests to find a comfortable spot for you.
last thing, I prefer to have backspace and shift on my left thumb and Space and Enter on my right thumb.
I've been using the Feker Alice 80 for the better part of this year. It's my first Alice board, but it's been really solid, and is considerably more affordable than the boards in this video. Would recommend!
I love ergo keyboards... Especially the Alice layout. I can type nearly a hundred words a minute and I game on it, but I have severe carpal tunnel and this has alleviated a lot of my issues.
How's the flex on that AFA? It looks insane. Alice boards definitely have that awkward typing phase at first but I can't live without mine. The aesthetic and comfort are too 🔥
It's insane
There're 3 adjustable gears and different spring materials, the softest gear is quite flex. It took me around 5 days to get used to the layout.
I've been using an ergo keyboard (Kinesis Advantage 2, $300), and it's been the best thing to happen to my wrists. I would LOVE for you to use this keyboard and then find a way to make it sound good. It does not have hot swappable switches at all. The PCB is flexible because of the key wells. It's... not for the aesthetics or the sound. It's ugly... loud, but it feels the best out of all the other keyboards I've tried. The other split ortho keyboards are better because you can place the splits apart.
The kinesis advantage 360 is a bit better... but more expensive. There's a few companies out there that are also reselling modified versions of these with different switch options other than cherry red/brown. The keycaps on these things are using a different profile. The mount to the cherry stems just fine, but their profiles are different due to the shape of the keywells.
Again, I would LOVE for you to try the ergodox style keyboards but custom ones made with dactyl or just the kinesis advantage boards... all of these are upwards of $400-500. But it's been some of the best $$ I've spent on peripherals.
The thumb clusters, re-programmability and key wells are game changers. Easily worth the money. I couldn't imagine paying the prices they're asking for that last keyboard he used.
Try the Kinesis Gaming Freestyle Edge keyboard. It's a mechanical keyboard with the standard layout but split, which is really easy to adapt to from a "regular" keyboard (IMHO). It puts my wrists in a more natural position, but doesn't have much a learning curve. I would suggest also adding the optional lift kit for it so you can tent the keyboard.
This was my daily driver for 4 years. I was a kinesis affiliate after meeting them at PAX East in 2017. Truly loved my experience with them.
I use a split ortho layout keyboard everyday. Hipyo, I can see you don't understand at all because that angle you had the first keyboard at is all wrong. You're going to make it worse like that. Also, I've grown to like my keyboards, but I had to put the work into adjusting because I had carpal tunnel syndrome so bad I couldn't carry grocery bags. Using this I've been able to put off getting the surgery for 3 years because of this and will probably be able to put it off for another 10 or more as my elbows and wrists have gotten so much better.
Your approach was wrong, you jumped into the most extreme with the split format, ortho with a layered layout, I use that but I worked my way up. Started with simple split for a few months, then got the two piece ortho with way less keys so you have to use layers for the layout. Even then I spent a weekend playing typing of the dead to learn, and the biggest thing to learn was the ortho because you have to teach your fingers to not go on the diagonals.
This market for these keyboards is very small, so out of the box solutions generally suck because no big manufacturers want to make something for such a limited market and any small companies that make them usually start 300 for cheap and plastic stuff. You'll have to build your own if you want to tick anywhere near all the boxes. And by build your own I don't mean what you do, I mean actually soldering hot swap sockets, controller boards and possibly diodes or batteries to the pcb. That's what I did and it was one of best decisions I ever made.
Your review was painful because you never addressed anything like that, you just said "I don't know anything!" and concluded ergo sucks. Not pointing out that there's a missed market here, or even bothering to look into why the split is there, or what the natural hand position is. Hell, most of your other videos you refer to the feet on the bottom of most keyboards as "Ergonomic", which they are not and you'd understand that if you actually understood what ergonomic is.
If you're going to talk about ergonomic you need to actually research it. Your video is probably turning some people off of ergo keyboards (people who might nee them) because of this, and your lack of awareness of this shows a lack of responsibility.
Do better.
id say the best solution is building something like a corne or a lily58 and 3d printing your own case with tenting for a true ergonomic experience that also looks really cool. The prebuilts just arent there yet in terms of quality imo, unless you order a build service for one of the boards i mentioned. Also, building something yourself is an amazing experience where you can truly customize to your specific liking. Split keyboards are still pretty niche, but the scene has progressed really nicely the past couple of years with typeractive, boardsource, splitkb and many others offering great easy affordable solutions and some of them even have build services, or offer nosolder kits for easy assembling.
other honorable mentions: kyria, piantor, cantor, sweep, sofle v2, 3w6 and gergoplex
and these are just split keyboards, theres some great ergo nonesplit boards out there too
Yes, My first ergo keyboard was a redox, that I make using spare switches, a 3d printer case and it was handwired , I did that because any split or ergonomic keyboard is really expensive to test if is something that you like, after that I build a lily58 and I really like it. Almos all split keyboards are open source and you cant get the schematics and pcbs onlyne, and made the pcb with any pcb service like JLCPCB, or PCBWay. So you can reduce the entry if you can do that.
The webpage keebfolio has a really long list of open source keyboard including ergoand split keyboards.
The keyboard halfs are made so you can tilt them for each of your hands to the most natural feeling positions, the main thing with these is to bend your elbows more outwards to rest more so your hand matches the turn of the keys.
I tried ergo keyboards for pain, but at the end of the day transitioning to a trackball is what helped me the most. Keeping a mouse around for gaming isn’t too difficult, and learning the trackball took a bit of time. But now I wouldn’t go back.
Omg. Me too! I use both an ergo board and a trackball mouse for work and a traditional mouse for gaming
While they may not be for everybody, after being in the keyboard hobby for damn near a decade and developing wrist pain, I finally decided to try out an ergonomic board. I gave the Fekker Alice 98 board a try (I have to have that number pad) thinking it may not be for me but giving it a fair shot. For me, this is the way, it took a few days to get going, and maybe a week to really get back in the typing grove but man, there is no going back for me. I tried going back to my standard keychron for a day and it was so awkward.
I liked Hipyo as a person, but this video is so misguided and cringeworthy. If he watched any other youtubers Ergonomic Keeb videos before doing his own he would not have come off as badly uninformed, ignorant and shallow as he did in this video.
Yes, switching to ergonomic keyboards takes time and retraining. He admits he knows little about ergonomics and he seems entirely unwilling to put effort in to try to learn. He clearly didn't do the research.
Take the time to understand why you hurt. If you have medical insurance you could have spend za $35 on a copay for an actual doctors office visit to get a professional to look at if you are developing an RSI and get recommendations about what you should be doing differently instead of buying a steffoscope and a bunch more keyboards you try for a hour then discard. Sickening. I can't watch
I literally state in the video that I did not do any research, am not an ergonomic expert, and wanted to showcase my own personal experiences with them for entertainment. These are the first impressions that a LOT of people have. (while filming this I had quite a few friends over who tried the various boards and thought similar experiences)
I'd like to do a full researched piece in the future, but based on the comments so far ergonomics seems HEAVILY subjective.
I've already been to physical therapy for my wrists, and I appreciate you not making assumptions about my medical health. (also you must not be from the USA cus it sure wasn't $35)
Got the Vulkan Maja V2 when it was in group buy, and it's been wonderful so far. I don't know what it is about ergos, but the sound is usually pretty flat. The Maja really slaps though. As for typing, there's a huge warming up period. My typing speed suffered for the first month of use, but once you get used to it, it feels so much more natural than a standard layout. It's a subconscious change that occurs over time. It's like ASMR - if you're consciously trying to analyze what makes the keyboard special, you'll miss it entirely. But if you let it fade into the background, a sense of comfort and ease comes to you over time. My shoulders have much less tension as a result of one year of use.
I have been mainly using my dactyl-manuform mini for about a year now and I dont think I could ever go back to a regular keyboard. The split and ergonomic layout has significantly reduced the strain I feel in my wrists and forearm throughout the day. I have even switched over at work with a keebio IRIS and it has helped greatly.
the dactyl manuform is like extremely ergonomic. I dream of getting one lol
So the two big reasons I have seen people talk about ergo boards are Ulnar Deviation and Pronation of the Radius and Ulna.
Ulnar Deviation occours in your wrists when your wrists are bent outwards toward your pinky fingers. When resting on a regular keyboard with a straight layout, we tend to bring our forearms toward the center of our body, then bend our wrists outward toward our pinkies to get our fingers to lay straight on the home row position. This can cause long term Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSI) in our wrists. This is why ergo keyboards tend to have a less standard key layout, more angled so our wrist lies at a more natural position.
Pronation of the Radius and Ulna (the two big bones in our forearm) occurs when those bones cross over each other. With your arm straight out in front of you and your palm to the sky, those two bones are parallel to each other. Turn your hand inwards so your palm is facing the ground, and those bones cross over each other. This can also cause an RSI. Ergo boards seek to raise the profile of each side of they keys so you don't twist your wrists as far to type, allowing the Radius and Ulna to not cross over each other as hard.
The problem with the "ergonomics" industry is it is never a one size fits all. Chairs, keyboards, mice, any of them. Each keyboard may be perfect for one person but suck or cause more damage than a regular keyboard would for the next person. Definitely understand why you are having wrist pain in the first place with a doctor before trying to actually fix the issue (I get this video is entertaining in nature, you said it yourself you weren't really giving them a fair shake as it usually takes months to get used to an ergo board).
I wasn't ready for hot doc Hipyo. I wasn't ready!
Hipyo, the ergo mech boards are amazing. I started with a Lily 58, upgraded to a ZSA moonlander, and just this week I upgraded again to a Dygma Defy (wireless FTW). As long as you're a decent touch typist you can get the hang of things and with the layers I already have my numpad under my right hand with a simple thumb press. I will gladly admit though that they have a bit of a learning curve.
did bro really expect to reach 50 wpm or something on a keyboard layout he never used before?
Yeah ik it should been longer like a month atleast
I got a keychron v10 and it’s great because it’s the only « cheap »custom ergo keyboard with a azerty iso fr layout and that’s nice ! Honestly the transition to an alice layout was very natural and i got less pain when typing with it which is AMAZING. BUUUT I STILL GOT A PAIN. I also type faster and that’s cool i think I’m gonna change my switches because i think 4mm is too much total travel for linear switches
It doesnt make sense to swap the keyboard every day. Took me multiple weeks to get comfortable at it
Did you put Ctrl, Alt, and Shift on your home row when testing the Ergo Dox? Did you work with Custom defined layers? For me, that's what made ergonomic keyboards being a game changer for me. Sure, on the first day I was down to 9wpm, but now I am back to 60-70 wpm. The homerow modifiers though. (chefs' kiss).
Also with custom layers I could move opening brackets ( ) to jkl-, I moved the num pad under my right hand ( 123 = m,. 456 = jkl 789 = uio ), and organized F1 - F9 in the same way.
Of the keyboards you tested, the ErgoDox is probably the best. You should put the 2 parts really far apart. Like at least at the distance of your shoulders. Then put your mouse in the middle.
Once you started it will still take at least a week until you feel really comfortable with the new keyboard layout, but I found it to be worth the investment. I type much more comfortably today, I have full control over my keyboard layout (which means I can change aspects of it at any time I see fit) and I even managed to actually learn how to touch type (which I had huge problems with before).
I use the piantor keyboard, though. It's an even smaller keyboard than the ErgoDox with only 42 keys.
This dude's checklist must've looked like:
- Make content on ergonomic keyboards.
- Talk about the switches and how it sound for the whole video
L video...
I recently switched to the Keychron Q11. I loved that while I adjusted, i had the option to fit the sides back together if i needed to got back to a default set up. I love a split space bar (for sound purposes) and being able to angle my wrists in a more comfortable manner has been wonderful.
As someone who has been using ergo keyboards for a while, here is my take: (for reference: I am using a zsh moonlander, which is an improved version of the ergo-docs, the use of which was recommended to me by my doctor because of my RSI)
First of all, learning indeed takes time, and, at first, they will feel worse. This is because, when you're not familiar with a layout, your hands tense up more, which is the opposite of what you want. The entire point of these keyboards is to minimise strain. For me, it took roughly a month of continuous use to get get to a point I was noticing the benefits over my previous keyboard. I was in uni at the point, but most people I know who switched did so during a quiet summer month at work. They are also no use without a good posture. The split nature allows you to sit in a more ergonomic way (arms down, making a straight bend at your elbows, with your hands at the same width as your shoulders. while sitting up straight,) but do not provide that posture on their own. On a similar note, you should place the mouse in between the boards, not to the side of it.
Then, imo more importantly: the target audience. Most if not all people I know who use the more extreme ergonomic keyboards (like, a dozen) are all software developers, usually the type that also use Emacs/nvim (which includes myself.) I have heard that some people who write large amounts of text also use them, and I appreciated my board while working on my thesis, but that's not what most people use it for. I think this is largely because the ergo keyboards do not make a lot of sense if you switch to your mouse all the time anyway. To feel the advantage, you should really use keyboard shortcuts for everything and generally keep your hands at the home row at all times. That is at least what they are optimised for. Gaming is possible, but most people have separate layers on their keyboard for it, or even use their old non ergo keyboards.
The less different ergo boards (like the Logitech ERGO K860), are found more frequently in offices of general work, and are better suited for people not willing to make a big switch, but those are all membrane boards, as far as I know.
As for what keyboards I would recommend: If you got recently diagnosed with RSI or a similar, I have heard good things about the Logitech ERGO K860. It is not an enthusiast board, but it takes around a week to get used to, and you will quickly start to feel the pain in your wrists get better. However, note that they won't accomplish anything without a good ergonomic posture, and it would be advised to get your boss to pay for a doctor that specialises in ergonomic working.
For the more extreme ergo boards, or generally if you want to play around on your own without the urgency of a medical problem, my favourites are the moonlander and the knesis advantage 360. They do not sound or feel as good as enthusiast keyboards (tough I have seen people mod them quite well with foam and different switches and all that,) but the ergonomics of them are great. The one thing I will say is that they are only as valuable as the time you put in. If you simply use a qwerty layout with numbers on top, modifiers to the side, the difference is not that large, only really helping your posture. However, if you do more extreme things. (for example, I use home-row mods, which is to say that a long press of a, s, d, and f or ;, l, k, and j, result in super, alt, shift and control respectively. This massively reduced the strain on my pinky from pressing control and shift. Moreover, my numbers are a numpad underneath u,i,o,j,k,l,m,,,., to be accessed with a modifier, which makes me reach less for the top of the keyboard, and allows the hands to keep a more natural position.) The better you want it to be, the more you have to change from what is familiar, the more time you need to spend learning it.
Other boards for this I have heard good things about are the kyria, Iris, Chocofi, Piantor, and glove80. All of these are going to be hard to get into.
So, in short, hypyo, I get why you don't like them, you are not the target audience in more ways than one. They are not meant to sound good, and they are not meant to be easy to learn. I feel like you evaluated a fish on its ability to climb a tree.
On a different note, something that I would be interested in, is seeing you mod one of these keyboards to make it sound good (probably the moonlander, as that is the only common hot-swap one.) tough zsh do not care about sound (literally saying that on their website,) that does not mean no users do. For the users of these keyboards, it is an interesting tutorial, whereas for the majority that does not use them can see how a board that is good, but simply not optimised for sound, can be made to sound better, with I'm pretty sure a big difference before and after, knowing what others have achieved.
Thanks for the detailed take!
If you are going to try to really do ergo you should probably try something smaller or at the very least something with a smaller thumb cluster to get used to it (personally I use a Lily58).
Start with the two halves as close together as you can get them and really work on your finger placement, I find that Ergo keyboard can be quite unforgiving if you don't have correct/perfect touch typing.
As you get more comfortable with typing you can move the two halves further apart (and eventually move your mouse into the middle), and then introduce tenting. I'd probably also look into getting wrist rests, though you'd probably need to get two short wrist rests (I 3d printed wrist rests into my tenting wedges for my Lily58 but being printed they are a bit too hard).
One issue I ran into when I first started with my Ergo keyboard was that I had needed to improve my whole setup. Just changing your keyboard isn't going to help too much if everything else about your setup isn't set ergonomically, I had to change my chair hight and the height of the chair's arms to suit my desk (I wish I had a motorised sit/stand desk!) and reorganise stuff on my desk before I really starting to enjoy using my Lily58. You should also look into changing layers and key placements, I still need to move my backspace and my enter onto my direct thumb keys, but moving the 'p' key onto the homerow was a godsend! Perfecting your ergo keyboard takes a while to get right, and it will be such a pain at first, but after a couple of weeks it will get so much better.
Also, full split keyboards, like the first one, are actually quite good for gaming as you can move the right hand half out of the way and it gives your mouse more desk space.
Even if they look weird I think they're worth buying.
Except for the Feker Alice 98, that one isn't worth buying: they have chronic manufacturing issues with the ribbon cables bridging the 3 internal PBC boards, so right out of the box the number pad won't work and the rest of the keys will randomly spew 2 key presses instead of the key you hit.
You can fix it by popping open the case (literally: it is an all plastic body that clips together instead of using screws, so you have to pry it apart) and then reseat all 6 of the ribbon cables. But even after it is physically functional, the driver software for it is garbage & antivirus programs flag it as a Trojan.
The sad part (outside of paying nearly $200 & then having to wait 5 weeks for a dysfunctional product) is that it is the most comfortable physical layout and contouring of the keys that I have ever used.
The keyboard doesn't suck you do, I bought that ergodox ez and I have been using it for about 4 years now, and totally happy with my purchase.
I switched to a Keycron Q10 at home and a Feker Alice for the office. It has helped so much compared to using 75% and 1800 boards before.
I just ordered a Feker Alice 98 for work. I know it’s going to take up so much space, but I need the num pad for work.
I just tried the Feker Alice and it made my forearms hurt more. Broke my damn heart, since it sounds and looks so good!
May I ask which one you like better and which keyboard is more silent between these two?
@@fastfolky That would depend on the switches you put in them, not the keyboard.
@@fastfolky I like both equally for different reasons. The Feker has more foam and a quieter dampened case sound. I tried Durock Lupine and Epomaker Sea Salt Silent switches in both. With the macro keys and Lupine switches I have my forever home board. With the incredibly muted case and Sea Salt Silent switches in the Feker I have a whisper quiet wireless board for the office. It is much quieter than the Nuphy Air 75. I can take notes during a meeting and you can't hear case ping, bottom out, switch noise or anything else.
Dactyl Manuforms are the BEST! You should try it out, because the keys are positioned to exactly match your fingers.
If you struggle to type on an alice layout like I first did, you have bad typing habits built up and never learned how to traditionally touch type using the home row.
I use a ZSA Moonlander, still keeping my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard and here's how I learned to use it.
When you order a moonlander and it ships, it says it'll give you a free typing game if you reply on why you wanted the keyboard in the first place, and I did just that and got the code to play Epistory, it was a blast and how i simply learned to type on the main letters.
And if not, it has a training program there so you can learn how to use the Moonlander. Even ZSA (the same guys who made the Ergodox, now selling the EZ version) knows how how bizarre thier keyboards are, so kudos for that.
P.S. I already see the glaring issue when you try the keyboards, is at least one of them has a wrist rest, none of them are tented (supposedly 45 to 60 degrees) and those things are pretty important for ergonomic split keyboards to prevent wrist pain.
I been using moonlander for a couple of years now but it took a bit to get use too
First things first if your hands and arms hurt after a while before even switching keyboard try building better habits/get a better chair. Your elbows and wrists are both floating in some clips. Wrist floating is good, that's a good habit, but you have to use your arm/elbows to have an "anchor" for the floating not to tire your arm faster, chairs fix that. And trying to use ergo boards without touchtyping/homerow typing won't do anything, if you don't start by fixing your typing habits, getting a board designed around better typing habits will only feel worse, idk what you expected and why you went in and bought keyboards first... Except for making content, of course : ^)
Great video! People should see that the learning period is super frustrating. Many ergo enthusiasts find the frustration is usually tolerated because the pain relief comes pretty quickly when you find your fit. I'm all about the kinesis advantage 360. BUT it isn't hot swap switches and requires some modding (that I haven't done yet but want to soon) to help the sound. My 2nd fav is the moonlander since I could customize it more. For me, the split keyboard opens up my posture and relieved my shoulder pain. My biggest issue was wrist pain, and that wasn't better until I used a tented keyboard. Turns out, rotating my wrist to type on a flat keyboard is what was killing my wrists. The concave layout of the kinesis helps with finger fatigue but generally speaking I find that the key is to place your hands more intentionally on top of the keyboard rather than anchoring the wrists at the bottom of the keyboard and stretching your fingers to reach the rest of the keys. Not sure if the way I said that makes sense but hopefully you get the point. I'll admit the columnar layout also had my fingers tired until but I also found it to be more intuitive and feel better after a couple hours of use.
The best advice I heard was that the ergo journey takes time to get used to it and it comes in phases. Phase 1 is breaking the old muscle memory and getting used to the new ergo layout. Phase 2 is realizing you are worse at ergo AND normal layouts so it can get a little demoralizing. Phase 3 is good at ergo layout, still rough at regular. Then finally the last phase is finding yourself equally fast as before, or even faster at both ergo and regular. I can feel myself barely getting to the last phase after several months, but my daily pain is now very rare. Worth it.
Echoing a lot of other comments here: I've been using a Moonlander keyboard for a couple years at this point and it's been life-changing. I think the biggest thing that helped me out was tilting the halves up as far as they can go (and then later getting 3d-printed bases that tilted them farther), so that i didn't have to flatten my wrists out to reach the keyboard. It's the same principle as a vertical mouse, something i personally swear by.
It's disappointing that this video will probably turn some people off of ergonomic keyboards. Your first priority shouldn't be the appearance of your keyboard, it should be your health - please trust me on that before you get RSI and have no choice anymore.
I've owned and used an ergodox and truly ergonomic (the first two in the video) for years each, and they're both good. I'd recommend looking at a keyboardio, though, like the model 100. It's a better built, more ergonomic keyboard, with a nice wooden case, sculpted keys that fit your fingers' natural positions, and easy tenting.
And please consider a good finger trackball, or at least a vertical mouse.
Argue about how they keyboard looks with a young person or someone who is trying to cope and accept their situation so they don’t feel depressed about it.
Ergonomic keyboards make sense when your writs/hand starts to hurt or go numb. I've been a moonlander user for about 2 years now and my wrist/hand pain went away a few months into using one.
That being said, if you're going to something that moves away from the staggered format you're going to have a big learning curve; think it was about a month of practice before I felt even reasonably proficient. The level of customization offered by the moonlander at least is fantastic, layers, multifunction keys.
Initially it feels clunky and yeah your hand gets sore, all the reaches are different than what you are accustomed to. This goes away after a couple weeks of use or at least it did for me.
This video is a disservice to people that might benefit from ergo. One day for one keyboard is not putting any effort into this. This video is a waste, just entertainment at best, and at most, misleading people away from something that might help them. They aren't meant to be FUN the yare meant to help your wrists.
I'm very happy with my Mistel Barocco as my travel keyboard. The biggest upside is that when I use it with my laptop I can lay it behind the screen, which is a HUGE improvement in hand posture compared to normal laptop keyboard sadness.
I dare you to use 40% boards.
I've just switched from my trusted old Leopold FC660M to a Keychron Q11 and I think that's the most sane switch one could do.
It get's even better after a few days. And also kudos to Keychron, the Q11 with the Gateron Reds sounds phenomenal!
It’s fine that people don’t want to switch, but this is just uninformed bashing and as spreading misinformation.
1. Clickbait title you say you would try for 1 week, only did a day.
2. His channel lives on reviewing traditional keyboards.
3. Switching would just make people value his opinion on regular keyboard less.
4. Says his open to try something new, but whines about it being different.
The end result is less people trying new things that could help them, for example people with RSI can attest to. All for a few more clicks.
Disclaimer he has valid points with price to quality ratios it is very expensive.
That hot docs transition to howdy hey got me, amazing! I've just ordered by first keyboard after watching many of your vids. Great content eh, keep up the entertaining keyboard commentary.
This was the most disingenuous take on ergo-keyboards on all of youtube. You could simply be outright facetious instead of peddling this sham of a "my honest experience" type of video.
I use the keebio iris with a tented setup, Hipyo should give it a try. It is a split ortholinear though, so it might take a bit longer of getting used to. Because it's tented so your wrist is not forced into a horizontal plane, and more to a slightly more angled feel.
You should try the moonlander, of the ergonomic ones they always seemed like the more comfortable ones
Try a Dygma Keyboard. You would like the Raise! So I just got an Xbows crystal and it is a decent board as well.
For a keyboard channel you sure know nothing about keyboards or typing