Tired of a boring, single piece keyboard? Thinking about a change but don’t know what all your options are? Well prospective-keyboard-shopper, today is your lucky day. We at the Hackaday are here to facilitate the habit with two excellent resources for the eager keyboard shopper; [pvinis]’s awesome-split-keyboards and [jhelvy]’s splitkbcompare.
As indicated by its title, awesome-split-keyboards is an awesome list of split keyboards 50 examples strong. Every split we’ve come across seems to be represented here, many with at least an image or two along with links to more information about how to build or buy the model in question. If that’s not enough, the bottom of the page has a wealth of background information about building or buying your own.
But before making such an important decision it’s important to make sure the keyboard in question will be a good fit in the hands. This is where splitkbcompare comes in, providing a visualization of many popular split layouts. If we hadn’t just found awesome-split-keyboards this filterable list and wide selection would have been the highlight here. But what does stand out is the ability to generate 1:1 scale printouts of the layouts in question, even stacking them for comparison, allowing a prospective buyer get a hands on feel for what they’re considering.
Not enough clackin’ action? Recently we’ve been producing a fierce amount of keyboard related content, of particular highlight is [Kristina Panos’]’ series called Inputs of Interest. Earlier in the summer she even built her own Ergodox split keeb.
[Main image source: HeliDox by diimdeep]
I’ve spent half my day today reading about Ergo keyboards, especially split. Leaning towards the Ergodox EZ. How did you read my mind??
Impeccable timing! I have tried and Ergodox myself, but if you don’t want ortholonear and are comfortable with the cost, I have an Ultimate Hacking Keyboard which I’m extremely happy with.
I have both a Kyria (from splitkb.com) as well as the Ergodox EZ. While there’s nothing wrong with the EZ keyboard as a product (it’s great, I own two EZ boards), the Ergodox layout has aged quite some. Usual critique is that the thumb cluster is too far off, column stagger is not aggressive enough and frankly has too many buttons. That’s where the Kyria comes in. It basically fixes all of those problems of the Ergodox layout. Plus you get to build it yourself by soldering, which is a great new skill to learn. Can highly recommend.
I don’t know how anyone can complain the the ergodox has to many buttons, considering that it is lacking several critical ones that keep me from being able to ever consider using one
The ergodox doesn’t lack any buttons though.
It doesn’t have dedicated function keys. I’dont care if they’ve added a 30 key sequence to switch a function key layer. I can relearn a new key position maybe, but I need them far to often to have them taken away
Literally a single key to raise to a layer with function keys on it..
Quite a few of those on the list are difficult to get in the UK/EU. The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard from Hungary seems like the best option, especially with those cool trackball and trackpoint addons but jeez is it expensive and ugly.
As much as I love custom mechanical keyboard I really don’t understand the split keyboard sect.
For me, with fairly broad shoulders, a split keyboard is more comfortable than having to mush my hands together as I type. YMMV.
For me, it’s because my build is such that I twist my shoulders / elbows / wrists to align them to a conventional keyboard, but can keep everything straight and neutral on a split with maybe 15-20cm of gap in the center. I have both a Kinesis Freestyle2 and a UltraErgo Wireless Split that I use with some regularity.
Split-QWERTY lets you get a lot of ergonomic gain without having to do much retraining (though your typing style may require a little, I tend to do right-hand ‘b’ on conventional QWERTY, and splits put it on the left because that is proper). I’ve tried several times to get Dvorak or 7-key Chorder (using the NASA/Infogrip BAT style chordset) into my fingers and my QWERTY conditioning is just too strong to comfortably overcome.
I use normal keyboards, and my wrists are straight and relaxed. My elbows and shoulders are relaxed as well.
Well, you probably don’t really need a split board then.
You can put a mouse or trackball in the middle of both halves :)
or dip
or coffee
Usually I have nothing between the halves of my Ergodox.