I’m currently on the journey of finding the next keyboard for me. In the past years I’ve been using the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard, which seems to have been discontinued. My goal is to improve my typing accuracy and speed, have my arms rest in a natural position, reduce hand and finger movements and get a product that lasts for a long time.
I have tried the Nocfree Lite, which is a nice, little and affordable (compared to the competition) wireless split keyboard. But I quickly realized, that I’m so used to a small actuation distance from the Sculpt and from Macbook’s internal butterfly keyboards, that I don’t know, if I could ever switch to proper mechanical keyswitches. Also while the split was ergonomic for my arms, its keyboard layout wasn’t made for hands at all. It has staggered keys and the slash/question key is very weirdly placed.
After my experience with the Nocfree Lite, the requirements for my new keyboard became quite clear:
- low-profile switches: since I’m so used to it
- split keyboard: for good arm posture
- wired mode: better latency, connection reliability and no battery life to worry about
- columnar key layout: designed for human hands not mechanical typewriters
- similar key switches to the Sculpt:
- force should be about 44-53g
- actuation distance ~1.5mm
- linear
- quiet
It turns out, there doesn’t seem to be an out-of-the-box keyboard, which fullfils all of these requirements.
The best match seems to be the Voyager from ZSA. It is low-profile, split and wired only. The downside here is that is has a lot fewer keys than the Sculpt, so I will definitely have to adjust to that. I wish it had a third thumb key. And I don’t think the keyswitches will be quiet enough, since there are proper silent switches one can buy elsewhere. To make it as quiet as the Sculpt, I probably have to get their SHHHOCS accessory and additionally buy silent linear switches like the Bokeh Low Profile. If I also realize that I need a higher tenting than the one it supports right out of the box, it’ll cost me again, plus the time to research on how to do it. ZSA doesn’t offer a platform for the Voyager like they do for the Moonlander.
Next up is the Glove80 from MoErgo. It’s bigger and has more keys. It has six thumb keys instead of two, so thats a plus. They also offer pre-configured silent switches, which the Voyager doesn’t. And it’s curved to reduce finger movements even more. But it’s not wired and from their discord and reviews, I can already tell that this will cause issues. One can connect the left side via USB, but the other side will always communicate wirelessly and has to be charged occasionally. To not drain the built-in batteries when using it in wired-mode only, it’s recommended to disconnect the internal batteries by opening it up and unplugging the connection. Here goes the out-of-the-box solution. Apart from that, taking it to the office requires a lot more space than the Voyager.
If I were to drop the low-profile requirement, I could try the Moonlander (even bigger/heavier than the Glove80), the Kinesis Advantage360 SmartSet (big and has been out of stock for weeks) or the Halcyon Elora (less polished, but seems to be very comfortable for thumb and pinky keys).
All of these keyboards are fairly expensive and have to be shipped to Germany from overseas, so returning them would mean to pay shipping fees of about 50 €. That’s an expensive price for testing a product, which is about 350 €. I miss having stores to test products before buying them. Berlin even had a showroom for keyboards, but it’s in the process of permanently closing and none of these keyboards would have been there to test anyway.
So yeah, this is the current status of the search for my next keyboard. I mostly wrote this down for myself to decide what my next step should be. Maybe this is helpful for somebody else out there too. It looks like I should give the Voyager a try, hoping that two thumb keys will be enough for me. And if it is, I could then invest in proper silent switches to get even closer to my perfect keyboard. I’ll keep you posted.