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> Jokes aside, I totally understand the appeal of mechanical keyboards. I’ve used them and it is satisfying to hear that clickity-click sound and the keys do feel amazing but that just doesn’t work for me due to being on so many pair programming calls and recording video courses.

I don’t like it when people equate mechanical keyboards to loudness. They don’t have to be loud! My keyboard has MX Clear switches which are not loud in the slightest, and I personally think they feel miles better than any non-mechanical keyboard I’ve used.

Yeah, no offense to the author, but this article read like one written by someone who really doesn’t know much about keyboards. There is a whole slew of different silent, non-clicky, tactile and linear switches to choose from, as well as sound dampening o-rings.

I think this article is written from the perspective of a satisficer- it sufficiently meets the requirements he cares about. This is the perspective of most consumers for most of the goods we purchase. It’s good to get a well-considered perspective from somebody that isn’t deep into the “enthusiast” category of keyboard purchasers.

Author here, I would partially agree with that.

I’m not going to mechanical keyboard conferences, lubing my key switches and I had no idea what a sound dampening o-ring was until I read the parent comment.

I haven’t gotten super into keyboards because I haven’t been negatively effected enough for me to go down that rabbit hole of finding something top tier that covers everything I want to do in a better way with 0 compromises. For example, typing into a terminal with 50ms of input delay is a horrendous experience so that lead me down a path of researching, finding and writing about monitors and terminals with extremely low latency which I think is safe to say is enthusiast level.

The same goes for audio equipment. I have a 3,000+ post comparing a few headphones, going as far as analyzing frequency ranges to help find the most neutral headphones so I can hear back my voice accurately while recording courses.

And for mice, back in the day when I played games more seriously I would put custom teflon pads on the bottom of the mouse to make it glide more smoothly and consistently.

But with keyboards. I am satisfied with a fairly low noise, tactile feeling keyboard that doesn’t skip or double press keys so I can chug along at ~80 WPM as a non-home row typist. I’m sure there’s better, but the pain just isn’t there to go deeper down the hole.

I see the keyboard as my primary tool for my job. I researched that tool and found the optimal one for me. In no universe is a keyboard with that little keytravel optimal for anyone.

I’m not even getting into mechanical/non-mechanical, ergonomic (in all the flavors) and typical staggered layout. That little keytravel leads to either 1) over-bottoming out, which over time is bad for your joints or 2) tons of missed keypresses.

Also even better than those o-rings (which reduce keytravel) there are switches with built in dampeners in the sliders (one expensive example https://zealpc.net/products/zilents but really https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0490/7329/products/Zilent_… you can see the little sliver of white at the top and bottom of the slider thats a little ‘rubber’ bumper that dampens the bottom-out and snap back (‘top-out’) sound.)

I didn’t really fall down the hole until about 10 years into my career when I had my first brush with RSI, but that landed me into a Kinesis Advantage which took awhile to get up to speed on, but now I don’t see myself going back for longer sessions.

The whole deal with mechanical keyboards feels to me a lot like putting too much emphasis on the rig without real justification. Sure extremely skilled people do need the extra performance in some circumstances, but chances are the rig is not used by extremely skilled.

And have seen it in a lot of fields and I’ve actually been culpable of it:

* competitive sailing: I’ve done quite a bit of dinghy sailing and regattas in my youth (Optimist, Laser, 420), I was always a bit frustrated because as I was not very good, I never had the best boat allocated. But in truth, as long as your dinghy is somewhat water tight and your set of sails are not blowing-up when a strong wind occurs, you are set, at least for a regional and even national level (one of my trainers actually won a national championship on a garbage dinghy that was laying around abandon in a parking lot).

* music (guitar): I’ve spent countless hours on forums arguing about guitars, amps, effect pedals and things like that. Today I own a Fender Telecaster (Made in Japan, not a US one), a Les Paul Classic, two tubes amps (one I’ve built, the other I’ve repaired). All that is far in excess of my actual skills. And I’ve seen far worst than me, I’ve literally guitarists barely able to play (like not being able to play 4 cords in rhythm) with 5000$ guitars and 3000$ amps.

* photography, I’ve seen people with 5000/6000$ (and more) worth of hardware (like Canon 7D or 5D + 2.8 80-200 IS USM + a few other lenses) not being able to frame correctly a picture. And personally, I’m far from good but I do own a second hand 5D (mark I) and a 17-40 L, and the best set of picture I’ve ever taken was with an old analog AE-1 with a 1.8 50mm lens that cost me 80 bucks during concert.

* mechanical keyboard: I do own a few mechanical keyboards despite the fact I’m barely able to type without looking at my keys (and I’ve tried to learn several times to type correctly without success using klavaro), and having a very slow word per minutes. I spend more time reading and thinking than typing so in the end, it doesn’t matter that much.

Clearly, I’m not the worst at it, but I’m definitely culpable. That being said, having a nice and expensive rig do provide for more pleasure in a lot of cases (ex: between a 150$ and 1500$ you do feel a difference, the touch is not the same, the wood vibration are not same, etc), and it’s completely OK to allow yourself these small pleasures.

However, acknowledging these small pleasures as such is important, a cheap guitar is fine, a cheap camera is fine, a cheap keyboard is fine, etc, no need to be pedantic about it. In the end, it rarely matters that much.

PS: cheap mechanical keyboards are actually kind of horrible, I’ve a 30/40$ one with MX browns copies, the thing is really annoying with key presses resulting in two or three letters being typed, shift+char not always working properly or sometimes a key press resulting in nothing.

It is conceivably possible to spend $1000+ on a keyboard (if you get in a bidding war for a rare antique on ebay or hire someone to design and build something bespoke), but for the most part the price of new keyboards is about $50–$250. This is not really comparable to the other expensive hobbies you described.

1) the cost aspect is only part of the equation, my point is also on the attitude of people

2) the mechanical keyboards is only one item, a gaming rig or a good laptop could cost you 1 or 2 thousands dollars if not more. It’s just that mechanical keyboards is where I see far more behavior in the line “these plebs who don’t know better”. And in term of relative cost, first time I heard 150$ for a keyboard, I was a bit puzzled, in my mind, a keyboard cost between 5 and 15$, so at least 10 times less.

Computer keyboards used to cost a whole lot, and were extremely well made, back in the 1970s and early 1980s when (a) typing was the main purpose of a computer and the competition was typewriters (which were expensive and often excellent), and (b) the rest of the computer cost much more.

Since then there has been a relentless 30+ year focus on cost cutting, and the elaborate engineering and expensive production that went into 1970s keyboards is no longer economically viable.

> see far more behavior in the line “these plebs who don’t know better”.

Personally I find that typing on a nice keyboard (which might be something picked up for $15 on ebay) makes a significant difference in typing speed, accuracy, and comfort.

Everyone I have ever met who was excited about keyboards (from casual users of split ergonomic keyboards or old keyboards salvaged from their own obsolete 80s computers up through hard-core DIYers with dozens of hand-soldered prototypes and hard-core collectors with hundreds of keyboards filling up their houses) was enthusiastic and friendly, excited to share their ideas and experiences.

People who spend their whole career typing and don’t know that they could find a better experience are missing out, and might enjoy trying some alternatives.

YMMV.

I can’t really blame him though, if you assume Amazon is the standard marketplace for everything all you’ll find is Cherry blue and red switches, and Razer/Logitech’s versions of those. It wasn’t until I attended a mechanical keyboard conference that I found out about Zealios, by far my favorite switch but near-impossible to find in pre-built boards. Even Clears, which are really great and my favorite Cherry switch, are somewhat hard to find if you don’t know specific keyboard sites.

I have the wasd keyboard with red switches and thin o-rings and it is quiet, quieter than my mouse buttons.

Also using a WASD keyboard (Code) with brown switches and o-rings. It’s clicky, but not terribly so. Next one will be clear switches with o-rings which I’ve tested and are even quieter.

I have the WASD Code with Cherry MX Clears. And while it is a bit quieter, I find it not as satisfying. The keys feel pretty springy, and there’s not much feedback. So that satisfying “click” of Greens, Browns and Blues, really is more my cup of tea. I did enjoy it originally though… so your mileage will vary.

So if I had to buy something off amazon, what would I be searching for? (Gamer & programmer, preference quiet keys)

If you want to buy one right this second, get the Vortex Race 3 with Clears. They sound and feel fantastic, and the aluminum case with the DSA PBT keycaps makes for a great build quality overall.

If you want to spend some time deciding, we should go over what kind of keyswitch and what kind of layout you want. This [1] is a pretty good overview of the different kinds of layouts (60%, tenkeyless, fullsize) and linear vs tactile switches. You can listen to sound tests for any switch on youtube to get a better idea for how quiet it’ll be. I personally use a Poker 2 with brown switches for 90% programming/10% CS:GO, and I love it.

[1] https://kotaku.com/how-to-pick-the-right-mechanical-keyboard…

Well that’s 2x vortex recommends. Bit more than I’d usually spend on a keyboard though…

Size aside do the tenkeyless have any other advantage?

For me, tenkeyless allows me to keep my mouse much closer to my keyboard which is significantly more comfortable. It’s somewhat common to have long-term shoulder injury from using a fullsize keyboard and mouse intensively, like for gaming: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/a5ques/has_anyone_…

I recently bought a Vortex Pok3r off amazon, with the MX Silver switches. Relatively quiet 60% keyboard that I’d definitely recommend. I’ve used a Pok3r with MX Blue switches for years but wanted to get something quieter for work.

Okay so two things cause the sound of the mechanical keyboard. The switch itself, and the bottom of the key hitting the are beneath the keys (called bottoming out, I believe). You can buy rubber rings that quiet out the bottoming out issue, but as for the switch sounds, red or black cherrymx switches are quietest.

If you want to cheaply try out mechanical keyboarding, I’d recommend the brand Redragon on Amazon. They’ve got a few options and they’re in the $25-$50 range. I’ve had my K552 for almost two years now and I don’t have any complaints. I program and game on it daily.

Kinesis Edge

It’s not my personal cup of tea, but one keyboard that should meet your requirements (and is a whole lot nicer to type on than the Amazon keyboard, assuming you are willing to pay a lot more) is the Topre Realforce,

http://www.realforce.co.jp/en/products/R2SA-US4-IV/index.htm…

https://amzn.com/B07K9CH5WS

I used to live with a roommate who listened to music at 2x speed. He said it was more efficient since he could hear more music in the same amount of time. A lot of these comments remind me of that mentality – mechanical keyboards are basically just a toy for typists or a piece of nice industrial design. It’s something to enjoy, there’s not much more to read into it.

You seem very determined to be disappointed by this whole discussion. If you completely close yourself to new possibilities, nobody can force you to consider them.

You said:

> 6+ hours and hundreds of comments later I went through the comments and I still haven’t seen anyone post a single mechanical keyboard that matches my requirements at any price point.

I was just offering one keyboard which does as far as I can tell satisfy all of your requirements. (The previous $250 version of this keyboard is about the same as this $350 one; the differences aren’t IMO worth the difference in price. You could probably find a used one for $150, if not less.)

Here are some of the features that make the Topre board nicer than your Amazon board:

– The actuation point is about halfway through the stroke instead of at the very bottom, meaning you don’t need to mash the key all the way down to get it to reliably actuate. Once you get used to this you can type with much lighter and springier finger movements, and (a) dramatically reduce the amount of shock on your finger joints, reducing both fatigue and long-term damage, while (b) improving your typing speed.

– Having taller keycaps on the further-away rows of keys compared to the home row makes them easier to reach by extending the distal joints of the fingers instead of moving the hand. It is in my opinion inexcusable for keyboards not intended for laptops to be flat across the top. Additionally, the keycaps have a curved top shape which helps the fingers find them.

– The switches have what many people find to be a more pleasant tactile response (this is subjective, and I prefer other keyboards, but those do not satisfy your other criteria). I would expect the 45g Topre keys to need less force than the Amazon board, but I haven’t ever seen measurements of that one. (Some people prefer heavier switches; Topre also makes a 55g version. Some people prefer very light switches; Topre also makes a 30g version.)

– In particular they have a nice bit of bounce on the upstroke which will help your finger to release the key just by relaxing the flexors instead of needing to fire your finger extensors. This will (a) reduce fatigue, and (b) improve speed and accuracy.

– The Topre keyboard is likely more uniform from key to key. Most <$20 rubber dome boards have poor quality control. (I have not tried the Amazon one.) It should also retain its key feel better over time.

– I would expect the Topre “silent” board to be quieter than the Amazon board, but I haven’t spent much time with either one, so you’d have to test that yourself. Personally I like much louder keyboards.

– The Topre keyboard is much more robust; the switches use capacitive sensing to tell when the spring has been depressed, instead of relying on an electrical contact, so they should not wear out even after tens of millions of keypresses.

– The Topre keyboard has larger rubber pads on the bottom, probably made from a nicer material. It should slip less than the Amazon board (being heavier also helps with this). It also has nice sturdy feet if you want to adjust the tilt.

– The switches are very stable and smooth, with tighter tolerances. The keyboard is much more rigid and solid feeling. Overall it feels like a well engineered product instead of a flimsy toy. Many people find joy in using well made long lasting tools, but YMMV.

– The keycaps are made of a sturdier type of plastic, and use dye sublimation printing. The letters will never wear off, and even the surface texture should remain through decades of serious typing.

– The electrical components inside the keyboard are more expensive and less likely to fail. You’d have to test latency, etc. for yourself, I haven’t extensively evaluated either of these keyboards.

– The keyboard supports full n-key rollover (this is unlikely to matter for routine typing).

> how is your recommended keyboard different than a run of a mill $50 mechanical keyboard

The switches feel substantially different. The keycaps are made from a different type of plastic. The case is sturdier. The switching mechanism is more reliable.

But keyboard preferences are subjective. Personally I like many $50 keyboards better than this $350 one. I was just looking to satisfy your criteria.

Thanks for the detailed response.

When it comes to the life span of the keyboard, how easy are they to clean?

With this Amazon one, I seriously spend about 30 seconds every 2 weeks wiping it down with a small towel and it’s as good as new in terms of cleanliness.

I’m not a neat freak but I do know that build up of whatever can definitely play a role in how the keyboard feels over time and full size keys tend to collect a lot more debris over time.

Also if you don’t mind, what would be 2-3 recommendations in the $50 range where quietness and overall “this feels great to type on” are the biggest goals?

Keyboards can be cleaned out by wiping them, spraying them out with compressed air, or if they are really filthy, pulling off all the keycaps and soaking them in soapy water (some people put their keycaps through a dishwasher; the obsessive use an ultrasonic cleaner), and thoroughly wiping the space underneath. In extreme cases the case can be opened up and the plastic parts can be washed separately.

If a keyboard sits on a very dusty garage shelf for 20 years with no cover, sometimes dust works its way inside the switches; cleaning that out is a lot more complicated, requiring desoldering and disassembling all of the switches. Don’t do this to your keyboard, and watch out for the condition of decades-old used keyboards.

* * *

Personally I like very loud clicky keyboards, like the IBM model F or anything with clicky Alps SKCM or SKCP switches (from the 1980s–early 90s).

If you can find one in good condition and don’t mind an adapter, I quite like the Apple Extended Keyboard II from ~1990 which is reasonably quiet (likely louder than the Amazon board; if you want to further reduce the sound you could open up the case and fill the empty spaces inside with some kind of padding – I know people who have successfully damped sound with sheets of drawer liner or felt).

Tactile Cherry MX switches (or any of the many MX clones) with added o-rings or other padding are reasonably quiet. I’m not really the person to ask though. Again, filling empty spaces inside the case can do a lot to damp the sound.

There’s also several new ‘silenced’ switches[1][2] which have dampening built-in by moulding in a softer plastic into the switch stem. I can’t stand the feel of o-rings; I use a Zilent switch keyboard for work and it’s quieter than a lot of my coworker’s non-mechanical/rubber dome boards.

1. https://zealpc.net/products/zilents

2. https://kbdfans.com/products/pre-orderaliaz-silent-switch-ta…

(unaffiliated with either of these stores)

The o-rings also don’t dampen the upward click of the key in release, whereas the dampened switch models do.

Funny thing is that MX Clears are unbearable to me as well. If anyone is interested in some specific silent switches, look into MX silent reds, silenced Topre, Gateron silent inks, Aliaz silents, Zilents, and Healios. There are sound tests on YT

That’s what I was thinking. Any decent mechanical keyboard has all of these features and more, and the sound the keys make depends on the switches, of which there are many different types. Some switches are designed to be loud (like the MX Blues) but you don’t have to use them.

I usually find that people who disparage mechanical keyboards do not actually know a lot about mechanical keyboards…

Which decent mechanical keyboard has the feature of being $14.50?

Most engineers with jobs aren’t making compromises on the price when their goal is comfort and usability.

You’re right. I bought a $250 Leopold FC660C to combat repetitive strain injury, because my doctor said to minimize the distance between the home row and my mouse pad. But most less-expensive 60% (“ten key-less”) boards either lack arrow keys or have obnoxious, loud switches. These weren’t feasible because I use arrow keys all the time for Visual Studio and I work in open-office hell. The Leopold has quiet Topre switches.

I’d buy a $15 keyboard in a heartbeat if it wouldn’t hurt my wrists. But for me, the Leopold is a medical device. I would have paid twice as much for it, which has nothing to do with the key switches at all.

In fact, I did pay 2x for it because I bought one for my home system as well.

Both my Microsoft and Logitech ergonomic keyboards are wearing out, so I spent some time last week looking for a replacement. Logitech seem no longer to make one, and Microsoft’s has laptop keys, which I find very uncomfortable.

This site [1] has a quick gallery, and this[2] Github page a lot more (including many niche or kit ones). The Kinesis Freestyle <whatever> looked like a good option, but I decided to try one of the nerdy ones, so I’ve ordered a VE.A clone from AliExpress.

I found both of these pages through the /r/MechanicalKeyboards wiki [3]. That community has a lot of posts and comments of people showing off gamer/geek/nerd stuff, but also seems to give reasonable advice to “normal” people wanting advice.

[1] http://xahlee.info/kbd/ergonomic_keyboards_index.html

[2] https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards/blob/mas…

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/buying_gui…

I have a Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and it’s probably the best keyboard I’ve used in a long time. The hand position is really comfortable and the keys have a nice response that isn’t too laptopy (I prefer low travel keys). My only complaints are:

– No caps lock indicator
– Fn keys are a bit small, and I prefer a Fn button as opposed to a switch
– Uses a proprietary dongle instead of Bluetooth

Maybe one day I’ll get an ErgoDox, but I need to figure out what switches I like first…

A colleague uses a Sculpt, so I did try it, but the key travel is such a long way from my (wearing out) Logitech Cordless Desktop Pro: that’s from about 2004, and has tall keys [1].

Perhaps you could use a tiny widget that shows the caps lock status next to the clock?

I ordered Cherry MX Browns, which seemed like a fairly standard choice — red for gamers, brown for typists. I just hope they’re not too loud.

[1] http://d2ydh70d4b5xgv.cloudfront.net/images/8/d/logitech-cor…

I don’t mean to intrude or otherwise question you but have you looked into weightlifting as a solution? I used to get RSI pretty bad, and had back problems until about four years ago when I did heavy (two-hours a day, six days a week) weightlifting for a few months. Haven’t had it since.

Thank you for mentioning this. That’s a great data point and I will look into this further.

Bikram yoga (likely any yoga also) helps as well quite quickly.

I think yoga complements any strength training program really well. Flexibility is very important for weight lifting if you want to avoid long term injuries.

For what it’s worth there are many cheaper options that would work for you.

For anyone else looking to reduce the distance between mousepad and keyboard, this size is usually called 84-key, 75%, or 80%. They have all of the keys that a tenkeyless has but laid out in such a way that the keyboard is significantly less wide.

this one is relatively cheap (they used to sell an even cheaper one that I currently own, which has off brand switched instead of cherry mx)

https://www.amazon.com/DREVO-Excalibur-Mechanical-Keyboard-S…

Thank you for this. I haven’t scanned the market lately so I entirely missed this new crop of smaller boards.

Nomenclature was the big hurdle I had to clear when searching for a keyboard. I didn’t know what these boards were called until a fellow engineer introduced me.

I’m sure “84-key” will be a helpful keyword to someone else reading this thread.

I had rsi as well, so bad I couldn’t shake anyone’s hand. I thought my wrist was broken. What fixed it for me was to drop the keyboard down onto my lap using a lapdesk. It took me forever to find this out, and there is research behind the ergonomics:

http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/ergoguide.html

http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/AHTutorials/typingposture.html

In my opionion, it’s worth a good read-through.
I also switched to an Evoluent vertical mouse and a Goldtouch split/angled keyboard w/o the numeric pad to minimize back-and-forth. Now I use lapdesk+apple magic keyboard+Evoluent vertical mouse, and don’t really have any problems.

Have you looked into the VSVim extension? It’s a bit of extra effort to learn vim, but you’ll never have to reach for the arrow keys again.

You’ll also need to map your escape key to Caps Lock. You can use AutoHotkey for this with this script:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c6t9sj3fygtre6h/AutoHotKey.ahk

Vim basically allows you to trade mental effort for hand movement. Over time, the mental effort goes away, but the saved movement lasts forever.

vim is my default text editor. And there is a dip switch on my Leopold FC660C that swaps ESC and CAPSLOCK (it even ships with alternative key caps to match this change).

But VS has so many shortcut “chords” that depend on HJKL that I can’t juggle both paradigms at once. When my brain is in “vim-mode”, I’m constant hitting ESC -> ‘:’ to trigger commands.

I had the same issue with Atom, Sublime, and VSCode extensions that mimic vim too.

As a user of the New Poker II 60% and other 60% keyboards, arrow keys are usually one dip switch/macro away. I also use brown dampened switches and they’re not noisy.

I really like the wasd “ten-keyless” keyboards:

http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/mechanical-k…

Red switches are quiet.

I think a 75% keyboard like the Vortex Race 3 would suit your needs:

https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_lis…

Speaking of engineers and jobs, it’s part of an engineer’s job description to make compromises on cost.

I’ve never seen a mechanical keyboard that wasn’t loud; let alone silent. (The thread topic is noise, not comfort or usability.)

That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Maybe if I rubbed shoulders more with the high society, I might get access to some invitation-only showroom for exotic keyboards where $14K will get you a whisper-silent unit.

I do have one almost absolutely silent keyboard. It’s quite awful to type on. Basically it’s one of those flexible rubber keyboards for industrial environments, where there are spill and dust hazards. I use it at night, not to disturb anyone. I optimized for sound at the cost of comfort.

You can buy silent switches, they cost about the same as non-silent ones. There’s really nothing that special about them.

I want to walk into a store, try some keyboards, and walk out with a silent one.

Well that’s obviously not going to happen unless you live in a super high population area. There isn’t enough people to support a niche market like that. But you can buy them online.

Such a store would have so few customers that it would cost $14k for such a keyboard. That same keyboard will go for $100 – $200 online.

Look in to Cherry MX Silent Red switches. I got a custom board made with those switches for ~$300. You can find cheaper ones but this is a specialty one. The keys are quieter than my mouse buttons and are comfortable to type on.

“I got a custom board made …”

That’s a complete non-starter. I’m not making a custom board for anything not related to guitar. 🙂

The general market of computer keyboard users is not going to build their own hardware for hundreds of dollars in parts if they just want a silent keyboard; that’s practically the same as admitting these things are not available.

Just buy a Leopold then. They cost $150-200 shipped from Korea, a bit less if you find a local reseller.

The secret is to buy mid-90’s NOS IBM keyboards.

Most silent mechanical keyboards are about the same cost as clicky ones.

Great; I’m in Vancouver, Canada; where can I walk into a brick-and-mortar store to try one?

Try memoryexpress, it looks like they stock some silent cherry mx switched keyboards.

Memory Express has a pretty good selection, I’d try there.

I was at a ME not long ago; I tried my hands on everything on display; they all make a sound. Some are good about not making a sound when the switch goes down, but the key makes a sound when bouncing back up, if your finger is completely off it. Space bar keys are particularly bad. A keyboard isn’t silent if the space bar isn’t.

You seem determined to be disappointed so I don’t think I can help you. People in the mechanical keyboard community obsess over the sound; what you’re asking for is like asking car enthusiasts for a silent car.

Is there a specific reason you need to buy in person? If you need to get a feel for the switches beforehand, many online retailers have switch samplers for about $15 USD. That being said, those don’t cover spacebars.

You really should not cheap out on something you will literally be spending thousands of hours of your life using.

If price is my primary selection criteria, it’s hard to beat free. I suspect I’m not the only one that has keyboards literally laying around: home, the office, friends houses, friends offices…

You can find something a whole lot nicer than the Amazon keyboard for $10 or $15 on ebay.

There were some mx red ones for $18 shipped in the US last week linked on geekhack

Indeed. I use a cherry MX brown board with o-rings at work, and it’s reasonably quiet and feels so, so much nicer to type on than the rubber dome board it replaced.

I was surprised by this point – I have the same keyboard as the author but when I’m on video calls I tend to use the keyboard on my MacBook because I’ve gotten numerous comments about how loud my keyboard is.

I use the MacBook built in speaker (not a detached microphone like he does in the video). My keyboard is on a wooden desk directly in front of the the laptop (with an open screen for even worse acoustics). Maybe I’d have better luck with a raised microphone like in the video in the article, but I would not say this is a particularly quiet keyboard.

This would be a problem with any keyboard that’s resting on the same surface as your microphone stand.

So in your case, it’s not because the keyboard is loud. It’s because you have huge rumble vibrations getting through to your mic, and this is masked with your laptop’s keyboard since it’s absorbing some of that.

If you look at the link in the post it has a sample of what the keyboard sounds in a typical screencast scenario when you have a proper microphone stand.

No standalone keyboard is going to prevent rumbles if you have it sitting on the same surface as your mic. Especially if your desk or microphone stand is wobbly (but it would still happen on a heavy stable desk too).

Agreed. I also have the same keyboard. And when on video calls, I regularly switch to the Macbook Pro built-in keyboard if I don’t want the other person to hear me typing (it is quite loud and definitely audible over a video call).

I wouldn’t say I’m a mechanical keyboard expert in the sense that I personally spent months assembling and disassembling a few of them while putting on custom switches and all of that but I have used (and listened) to a few of them in situations where it was in a controlled environment (I know what the room is like, the mic used, positioning of everything, the switches, etc.) and I haven’t found any mechanical keyboard / switches that were quiet enough for me on video based on what I heard.

Do you have a high end recording set up? A good mic, boom stand, etc.? It would be curious to hear your set up on how it comes off on video when typing at your max WPM.

Silenced Cherry, Gateron, ZealPC, Aliaz, and Outemu switches are near inaudible when lubed.

Near inaudible is also bad because it’s important that you hear something in the videos (this is explained in the article).

But I definitely never heard of having to lube your keyboard before using it. I’ll look into that just to see what it sounds like. Hopefully someone with high end recording gear has done real world tests.

Silent switches aren’t completely silent; near inaudible is relative, and given that you’re evaluating switches in terms of their sound on a recording, “near inaudible” might work great for you.

There are a lot of variables when it comes to lubed switches, with the type and amount of lube used having an effect on the overall feel and sound. This is an interesting guide and rather long discussion about methods of lubing Cherry MX switches, for example.[0]

You’ll find a lot of videos some decent decent recording tests[1] of switches in general out there, but not a ton that are exhaustive comparisons of different switches and modifications. This video,[2] for example, compares decibel readings from Cherry MX Red, Blue, the Topre 45g, and Cherry MX Silent Black and Reds.[0] Comparing across different tests has obvious problems, and since you’re looking for a sort of goldilocks sound level for a specific use case (not inaudible, not too loud, just right for recording), you might wind up wanting to experiment a bit with a switch tester. Other factors like the keyboard case construction and the keycaps you’re using are going to have an effect as well; a mat underneath the keyboard will have a noticeable effect for many keyboards, for example. Not to mention how you type and whether you’re bottoming out. Personally, I find that kind of experimentation fun but not everyone will agree.

Because you’re recording, it might be easier to look at testing different microphone positions and experimenting with positioning a few layers of foam between your keyboard and microphone to absorb some of the higher frequencies. You won’t be able to make it entirely silent, which isn’t the goal, but you might be able to get it to a level that sounds pleasant in your recordings.

0. https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=34332.0

1. https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=56648.0

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdFIht3A2To

Agreed, I have MX Clears and they’re not bad at all. That said, they are still louder than standard (rubber dome) keyboards, even with o-ring dampeners installed.

But, I switched to a noise reduction headset and my screen sharing partners say my keyboard noise is now equivalent to people with rubber dome keyboards (you can barely hear it).

I have a keyboard on order with “silent red” mechanical switches. From what I understand, they’re similar to rubber dome keyboards in noise level and if that’s true then I won’t have to use the headset all the time.

You can also get a better microphone.

I use a Logitech G Pro keyboard, which sounds (to my ears) roughly the same as MX Browns, but I use a supercardioid dynamic microphone (the sE L7, which for my money is the best dynamic microphone you can buy until you get up into the ElectroVoice RE320 territory) on an arm. It’s got a tight enough polar pattern that I don’t even need headphones because my desk speakers don’t feed back, let alone the keyboard that’s at a 90 degree angle from the business end of the mic.

I do have a few studio microphones and a high end (apogee ensemble) audio interface. But, that setup is even less convenient than wearing a headset. I appreciate the suggestion though… if I am going to record or broadcast any keyboard sessions that require some polish then I’ll definitely isolate my voice with a pickup pattern.

YMMV, but I solved the convenience issue by putting that arm on a flange mount (not a clamp) and that alone made things a lot easier. It also makes people think you’re more serious, which is a nice side effect.

I have a bunch of studio mics, too, but I’ve found that teleconference is easier with a cheap but tight-pattern dynamic. Check out the sE V7. It’s tremendous for exactly that.

I have MX Reds at work and while they don’t have the ‘click’ that Blues have, when the keys bottom out it’s still louder than a membrane keyboard. Fortuently, you can get cheap o-rings on Amazon designed to force the switch to bottom out before the key cap hits the floor of the keyboard or the switch. It’s a remarkable improvement for especially quiet offices.

Many mechanical keyboard users bottom out. That is noisy.

It also hurts their fingers. My brother loved his mechanical keyboard (Cherry MX blue). Very loud (he bottomed out), very satisfying, but he had to quit because his fingers hurt.

Not all bottom-outs are created equally. I bottom out on my MX Clears but the increased stiffness dampens the force to the point where my typing is comparable to the latest apple keyboards my colleagues use. I don’t even use rubber dampeners which would further reduce sound.

As long as the switches aren’t of the clicky variety (e.g. Cherry MX Blue) you can make the keyboard really quiet with GMK QMX clips or something similar [1].

How well isolated the keyboard is from the table can also make a big difference so it can be worth to put a piece of folded microfiber cloth or something underneath it.

[1]: GMK QMX Clip sound test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UroBHvL5LZ8

MX Clear switches are a joy to use and are Open Space friendly. I tried a lot of cherry MX and I wont switch.

My Cherry MX Red Silents are really quiet (as quiet as a membrane or laptop keyboard, without the chatter) and very crisp.

+1 on cherry clears. I recently switch from typing on WalMart keyboards at home and Mac keyboard at work to using a Code keyboard with clear switches. By God typing is such a wonderful experience now, and the noise isn’t worse than the WalMart keyboards. granted it’s not as quite as the Mac keyboards that are so thin, but it just feels day and night different (better).

The average rubber dome keyboard is significantly louder than my cherry pinks

Sorry, enlighten me – why is pair programming such an awful idea, in your opinion?

There are definitely benefits that are larger than just mentoring or bouncing ideas. Often, the sum is actually greater than the individual parts, as fewer mistakes get made and more fruitful paths get explored earlier/faster.

Most coding mistakes are not very expensive.

As the other poster said, most coding mistakes are not expensive and the ones that are should have automation/testing in place around them. It is definitely not worth having someone look over your shoulder and eat up the little breaks you naturally give yourself. There is a reason that hardly anyone at companies like Google, Amazon, etc. do pair programming.

My situation is a bit different.

I often go on remote calls with people and our task is to implement something while also training the person or giving tips on how to do it in the future while answering any questions they have in real time (related or not).

So it’s more of a 1 on 1 teaching gig for an hour or 2. Not 8 hours of pair programming every day full time.

Pair programming is great. But as with all things, only in moderation. An hour or two per week can actually be quite enlightening and eye opening.

What exactly is empirically wrong with Pair Programming?

Then what is empirically wrong with trio programming? If the pair programming wonks actually have data to show that it is a net benefit, then they surely must have evidence showing that 2 is a good maximum on return.

Like to this day, I have never seen any reproducible strong evidence provided that pair programming is beneficial. And I don’t know if I would call the occasional ad-hoc (unstructured) “pairing” anything other than what a normal person would call it: “two people collaborating like normal fucking human beings.”

But if there is evidence that 2 is better than 1, why is 3 or 4 not even better?

Have you personally tried it? It’s great!

So call it collaborative programming. People tend to work well with someone checking their work, and more than two is limited by human communication. You’re creating a strawman that I’m saying “The more, the merrier”. I’m not.

So you think that pair programming is never a good idea?

Author here.

A lot of people commented here saying it’s questionable not to mention I happened to use an affiliate link.

I want to thank those people for bringing that up. My intent wasn’t to deceive anyone and I hope my HN comment history (98% of what I post here are comments on other people’s stuff) separate me from yet another affiliate blog spammer.

I just pushed an update to my site that now includes a little snippet of text at the top of every post that has 1 or more affiliate links.

If anyone is curious about the numbers. I have 243 public posts about a whole bunch of developer focused topics at the time of writing this comment and 15 of those posts had affiliate links, and of those 15 posts most of them are 2,000 to 5,000 word articles evaluating and talking about a product or service I really enjoy using and have used successfully for months or years before even writing about it.

I’d be curious to hear how many hits you’re getting on the affiliate links, compared to view counts. Is it even worth it?

Isn’t it required by Amazon Affiliate to have a warning on ALL pages that link back to Amazon using affiliate tracking? Isn’t it also required by federal law as well?

Not sure if you’re joking or not – are there really federal laws about affiliate links?

Not joking at all. If you are being compensated to place a link, the reader should know. I think it’s a fair law.

Do those affiliate links make enough to make it worthwhile?

I wrote a 2,300 word blog post about affiliate links earlier today that I will be posting next week (and probably linking to that in that little snippet of text).

It goes into the details.

The TL;DR is no it’s not worthwhile if you’re factoring in time spent vs money earned.

I put close to 5 years and 5,000 hours of my time into creating my site and supporting anyone who asks questions for free with zero expectations. I currently make about $50-75 a month from all affiliate links combined.

But to be fair only 5% of the pages on my site have affiliate links because my site isn’t about affiliate sales. It just so happens as a developer I sometimes find useful products and write about them. 95% of the posts are about some programming / developer topic.

>I’m sure you’ve seen keyboards where the lights of these keys are all grouped together near the top right of the keyboard instead of being on the key, such as what you see below:

>This comes down to poor UI design or bad tech choices. You want related things to be together. If I have caps lock on by accident, I want to be able to look at the caps lock key and see the light. I don’t want to have to look on the other side of the keyboard.

Completely disagree. I want to have all the status information in one easy and non-obstructed place. On my keyboard, when I have my hands on the home row, Cap Lock is obstructed by my pinky. Also, Cap lock is much further down from the top of the keyboard making the eye distance travel more to check it.

I’m a keyboard enthusiast, I have a collection of ~15 mechanical keyboards with various switches, hand lubed, modded (spring swapped, stem swapped) various materials and sizes from the plastic HHKB to the monstrous TX1800 (fits the keys you’d find in a full size keyboard into the frame of a TKL).

I’m happy the writer has found a keyboard that works for them. Although I think that they’d be able to get a better typing experience by building a custom keyboard, it would cost easily $300+ and take a lot of time/research/etc.

Even though keyboards is one of my biggest hobbies, I still have a lot of respect for OEM keyboards that maintain a good typing feel at a relatively low cost.

I especially like the Apple Magic Keyboard, although many of my mechanical keyboard-using friends may not agree with me.

Anyone interested in typing, I strongly encourage to check out /r/MechanicalKeyboards on reddit.

You can customise anything!

– Switch feel/tactility/sound

– Case material, colour, size

– Keycaps, feel, sound, look, legends

– Custom software, macro keys

– Talk to friendly people who love keyboards

I’m not an enthusiast, but I agree with out in general.

I have maybe a 2014 version of the Apple keyboard (wired/numpad) at the office and I love using it. I can work long hours, not feel fatigue, it’s never failed, etc etc.

I also use a Logitech K840 at home: https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/k840-mechanical-corde…

And it suits me just fine. Also a pleasure to work on. Though I’m not a switch purist, either. And I’m a sucker for the aluminum… (mainly because I’m likely to drop something on it, or drop the keyboard itself at some point) it’s solid for a decent price. I think I even waited to get it on sale.

Hey I’m a 840 fan as well. At first I didn’t like that romer-g switches didn’t have quite as much travel as Cherrys, but now I prefer it as the keyboard is a little lower.

I’ve heard keyboards that use dome with slider designs, like Packard Bell keyboards, are about as cheap as generic non-mechanical keyboards, but avoid the mushy bottom-out, making the typing experience infinitely better.

Something like the Topre Realforce keyboards are nice if you want something a bit softer but still high-end. Most of the reasons we end up with bad feeling keyboards is companies looking to cut costs. I highly encourage other developers/typists to find an opportunity to give a good mechanical keyboard a try.

Topre Realforce keyboards are expensive, but very good quality, and pleasant to use. A pair of them have been my daily drivers at home and at work for the last 8 years.

I think the OP’s article is quite a good rundown on basic usability features that are perplexingly missing on many keyboards. The Realforce ticks the boxes – except for extra media keys, which YMMV on. I also appreciate the ability to swap the CTRL and CAPS LOCK key on the keyboard by flipping a dip switch, which allows my preferred layout (it even includes the extra replacement caps lock key, and it actually has an LED under where the old CTRL is, so you keep your caps indicator).

I just bought a Topre Realforce R2 (variable weight) not too long ago, and I love it!

I think they’d get a better typing experience spending $25. The Amazon Basics keyboard is the worst keyboard I’ve ever used. This article is just forcefully contrarian.

Do you have multiple in depth articles comparing those keyboard recommendations in relation to the amazon keyboard?

Price wasn’t really a factor in my decision to use this keyboard. I mean it’s nice and all that it was $14, but I wouldn’t think twice about spending more if a better solution existed.

As mentioned in the article I did spend a lot of time looking for alternatives.

If I had $25 to buy one keyboard, I’d probably get something from Logitech. The typing experience wouldn’t be good by keyboard enthusiast standards, but more than good enough to actually get things done and not complain about how things feel.

>This article is just forcefully contrarian.

I’ve been typing on some <15 logitech keyboard at work for like 5 years.

I like it in the it does the job sense & I can leave it on my desk if away for a month or three without worrying about someone damaging or stealing it.

Nothing wrong with logitech keyboards! It’s a bit like high end audio, once you’ve tried it, it’s hard to go back but it’s certainly not something you absolutely need to do to get by.

I don’t need to worry about someone stealing my current keyboard though, it weighs over 6kg!

You might collect Ferraris, which might all be objectively Robust Wire / USB Cable
better than a Honda Civic, but you aren’t going to drive one every day.

You wouldn’t drive a Ferrari every day because they’re not comfortable or practical, and because they have short service intervals and very expensive consumable parts. And a high performance car is almost necessarily not a reliable car since it’s operating near the limit, especially once it has tens of thousands of miles on it.

OTOH a mechanical keyboard is much more comfortable than rubber domes for many people. And they can last almost indefinitely, even if a switch breaks, you can fix it in a couple minutes if you have a soldering iron. If you spill coffee on it, you can clean it with isopropyl alcohol and most of the time that will fix any issues.

I have a Model M with the flow-thru option; keyboard is probably 30 years old or so.

My mobo still has a PS/2 port, but I bought an adapter for USB when that time comes. Other than needing a really deep cleaning (something I really need to do) – it works flawlessly.

And it doesn’t have any of the “Windows Key” junk that happened in the 90s to distract from my *nix aesthetic. Only downside is that it is beige, while the rest of my system is black.

When/if it ever breaks – I have another one waiting in the wings, plus a Unicomp USB classic also available (I’ve been thinking about swapping it out to keep the aesthetic – and replacing the ‘doze keys on it with Tux keycap covers or something like that).

Somewhere, in my junk stash, I also have an old SGI keyboard that I need to look into making an adapter or something for…

There was a Linus tech tips video a while back about a new run of copycat Model M keyboards using some combination old tooling and new techniques (I don’t remember the specifics at the moment). Are you familiar with those boards at all?

IBM sold off their keyboard division to Lexmark, and eventually Lexmark decided to stop doing keyboards, so two Lexmark employees bought the tooling to make the very last model of the “Lexmark Model M” and still make them to this day under the Unicomp brand.

The company is Unicomp for those wondering.

Why wouldn’t you use a more quality keyboard every day though? You’re literally spending thousands of hours of your life using it, why cheap out? It’s not even comparable to cars like that. It’s not like mech keyboards are practically unusable in any conditions like how high end cars are somewhat unusable in adverse weather conditions.

My logic is that it’s good to invest in a good mattress cause you spend 8 hours a night in one, good shoes because you spend another 8 hours in them and a good keyboard as I’ll typically spend a lot of my day typing.

Now, the main reason I’ve not just bought one good keyboard and continued is honestly because the custom mechanical keyboard community is so nice. People design their own keyboard cases, caps, parts and there’s so many ways of putting your dream keyboard together.

The responses from the keyboard enthusiasts here are a real life example of this phenomenon: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg

The guy just likes this cheap keyboard. I use those aluminum Mac keyboards for most of the same reasons: I like (somewhat) low key travel, they’re cheap and easy to find, and last reasonably well.

Edit: Actually it looks like the $50 keyboard I’m talking about got replaced by the “Magic” keyboard that’s considerably more expensive. Too bad.

It’s more that he’s so wowed by extremely common features that it comes across as shilling, which it is due to using his referral link. This is an advertisement disguised as an article.

The keyboard enthusiast community online is pretty notorious for gatekeeping and people often conflate something being objectively bad with their subjective opinion. In reality it’s all about preference and what feels right to the individual.

no, this guy is just selling his cheap keyboard via amazon referal link. and “if they ever stopped making it, i’d buy a few if them!”

You’re quoting things out of context.

I only said that because it was something I did almost 20 years ago with the Logitech Wingman mouse when it was officially labeled as no longer being produced.

It’s just bloody obnoxious. I’ve always used crappy keyboards for work and they’re all fine – my work isn’t affected and I don’t get RSI.

I’ve used many different keyboards. I can’t say I’m a keyboard connoisseur, but I’ve probably used every possible combination of “keys” arranged on a “board”. My takeaway from all this is that the switches matter a lot less than how keys are arranged. You see, human hands will become injured over a prolonged period of contortion into the shape needed to operate standard keyboards. For this reason I prefer ErgoDox. https://ergodox-ez.com/

Best keyboard I’ve ever used. And after all the horror stories about how long it takes to relearn I was back to normal speed after about a month.

Well, it is quite a bad experience in the first days. It’s both learning a very new layout as well as getting used to the ortho alignment of the keys, where in the beginning I automatically used the wrong finger for a lot of keys. That said I’m glad I made the leap, because no standard keyboard can match that level of comfort.

It’s not that normal keyboards are bad, but it’s a bit like going from cheap generic shoes to custom-tailored ones. I don’t type much faster or accurately on it, but it feels much better, every single day.

Which type of switches do you use in ErgoDox?

> The Amazon Basics is $13 incl shipping ($10 each if you buy ten) whereas the cheapest configuration (no tilt kit, no wing rests) of your board is $270.

Or you could get a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 for $35.

I am not willing to spend the money to give it an extended try because it probably would prove worse for me that the Amazon Basics because the PC board or boards the keys are mounted on are curved.

With any curved board, I worry that I will have to pay too much attention to achieve the condition (3) in my previous comment (without my constantly looking at the board, which of course is important to avoid). That was my big problem with the Kinesis Advantage.

For convenience I will now repeat condition (3) from my previous comment: at the moment of contact, the finger tip is moving roughly in the same direction that the key will travel. Keys mounted on a curved PC board will all travel in different directions. My worry is that for me to maintain my condition (3) during my use of such a board will require me to pay an excessive amount of attention to keeping memorized to a sufficient degree of precision the direction of travel of every key. (If I’m not constantly looking at my keyboard, then the only way for me to maintain my condition (3) is to have the travel direction of every key memorized.) When all the keys travel in the same direction, as is the case with any standard keyboard, I only need to keep memorized that single direction.

Also there is a condition (4) not mentioned in my previous post: namely, to strike the key cap roughly at the key’s center line, which is made easier when as is the case in a standard keyboard, but is not the case with any of Microsoft’s post-2005 ergonomic keyboards, each center line of a key with a letter or number on it is exactly .75 inches from the center line of its neighbors left and right provided the neighbor also has a letter or number on it.

Microsoft’s pre-2005 ergonomic keyboards were OK, i.e., not curved. (The direction of travel of the keys on the left half of the board was significantly different from the direction of travel of the keys on the right half, which meant I needed to keep memorized 2 different directions of travel, which was easy enough — and of course vastly easier than memorizing the 80 or so different directions of travel of any post-2005 Microsoft ergonomic keyboard I am aware of.) I bought 1 or 2 when they were still being produced. My big problem with them was their lack of sufficient “key stability”: that is, like most cheap keyboards of the time, the key cap would rotate a lot when struck off the center line or when the direction the tip of the finger is moving on contact with the key cap is not parallel to the key’s direction of travel. Among the really cheap keyboards I have used, the Amazon Basics has by far the most key stability. (Its short key travel helps it there. Also, I suspect, but was unable to use a search engine to confirm, it uses a scissor mechanism, which also helps.)

The cost of the ErgoDox is why I bought a kit instead. It’s more effort to solder the switches, flash the board etc., but I saved a chunk of the price. It can also be repaired more easily, although contrary to your experience I don’t have the impression that would be required for a long time.

It’s not like such a keyboard is life-changing, but it’s a significant improvement in comfort. For a tool that I use every single day that was worth it for me, if others are satisfied with an Amazon Basics model that’s fine too; I haven’t tried it myself, but I do know that some non-mechanical keyboards offer a great tactile feedback for much lower prices.

>For a tool that I use every single day that was worth it for me

Well, sure if it were guaranteed to prevent or cure RSI then either spending hundreds of dollars or getting out the soldering gun would clearly be worth it.

But I suspect you didn’t get my point, which is that I spent the $270 in 1997 dollars for a Kinesis Advantage (and later on a different mechanical board) and it did not work for me. Or more precisely it did work for a month or 2 — not because the Kinesis was more innately ergonomic than any other board, but rather because I wasn’t used to it. Once I got used to it, it stopped working.

Wrists aren’t the only issue. I think split keyboards allow the hands to rest further apart which assists the shoulders and prevents too much internal rotation.

FWIW, I’m a big fan of membrane keyboards now. The MS Sculpt is my current favorite, but mainly because I can’t see spending hundreds more on a fancier keyboard that I can’t try in person. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good value for me. IMHO, I think minimizing key travel is a good thing. Take a hint from musicians – unnecessary movement is generally bad.

This article is an affront to everything I know and have experienced about keyboards, all to post a non-disclosed affiliate link.

The blog is very technical (Docker, Linux, VIM) https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/ As far as I see it’s the first post about a product. I don’t believe it was written just to push affiliate links.

Thanks.

I had another 4,000+ word post about monitors from a few years ago.

After 250ish posts it’s hard to keep track of everything but I think you are right. That monitor and this keyboard post is the only time I ever specifically wrote about a product.

I write about what I happen to be learning about and using at the moment. Sometimes it’s Flask, sometimes it’s Vim, sometimes it’s finding a useful product or service I came across while doing developer related things (like typing or looking at a monitor for long hours per day). Often times what I write is what I wish I could have read before having to put in all of the hours of research myself.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc…

FYI.

Thanks. I’m working on addressing that now.

I’m currently at 1,800 words to explain the use of my affiliate links for an upcoming post. Then I will modify my static site generator to auto-insert a 1 line sentence into any post with an affiliate link.

It will be a couple of hours or even a day for all of that to materialize since I need to balance that into a full day’s work but I do want to get it out asap, so maybe tonight I’ll be going to bed late. 😀

Thanks for addressing it, I didn’t mean to create a ton of unwanted work, but I do see this error crop up a lot among tech blogs that I peruse.

I should be thanking you. I addressed it.

Although for a first pass I just put a small message about the affiliate links at the top of every post that has an affiliate link (15 out of 243 posts btw).

That’s what (technical) blogging should be all about. Much appreciated, thanks!

I have no problems with affiliate links not being disclosed. Why does it matter? If they’re providing a useful link to someone, I don’t care if Amazon gives them a few pennies as a reward. If their link is not useful, no one is harmed.

I also have a website with some affiliate links. Disclosing them as such is an FTC-mandated practice. It’s not about giving pennies as a reward or not. It’s about responsible transparency and standard fair business practice.

Because it may just be that the article is written around the links, rather than the links inserted into the article.

Sure you might not bother buying the keyboard after clicking through but the affiliate link is tied to you for x days, so they’ll get a bit of cash of anything you buy in that time.

Why is it a problem if it doesn’t cost you? It costs you the time to read it. Disclosing acknowledges this potential and explains what’s going on in advance so you know you’re not just reading trash someone wrote to make a quick buck.

I don’t think you can make that assessment just by looking for affiliate links or notices.

What if you found a 2k to 5k word article on something you really wanted to know about and maybe buy.

Also what if that person spent 5,000 hours over 5 years building up their site and only 5% of the posts on their site has an affiliate link for something.

Would you discard that post as trash / scammy because they happened to drop an affiliate link into it because they personally used that product for years before writing about it?

IMO you can’t really gauge any of that just by looking for an affiliate notice or not.

Please do note the difference between me answering “Why does it matter?” and a review of your article. I have made no comment on this specific article.

I don’t make the assessment by looking for affiliate links. I make the assessment on undisclosed affiliate links, which I believe the article was at the time. It’s one of many things that could indicate an article written around affiliate links and nothing is perfect.

You’ve since added disclosure so it’s a moot point now 🙂

Ah true. Yes there was no disclosure before.

Also, if I’m researching a product or category and find several articles discussing it, knowing which ones have affiliate links allows me to weight them appropriately (i.e., discount the affiliate articles somewhat, and give more weight to articles without affiliate links).

> Your rollover is the worst possible value you get.

> With the Amazon Basics keyboard I’ve seen as high as a 6 key rollover when pressing spui<space>c

“As high as” implies that you’ve also seen lower. Which isn’t the rollover of the keyboard.

My crappy two-key rollover (QWA fails) keyboard supports that specific keystroke combination.

Unless he edited it in the last 10 minutes since your comment, it already says

> Out of everything listed about this keyboard, its rollover is its biggest weakness as it only supports a 2 key rollover in the worst case.

I didn’t edit it.

That was in the article when I originally posted it. He even quoted me in his quote with “> Your rollover is the worst possible value you get.”.

I despise terrible laptop keyboards, even though I’m using one at this moment. This Amazon keyboard is very much like a laptop keyboard, and thus I know that I would hate it.

I fundamentally don’t like low profile keyboards where there is barely any perceptible pressing. I don’t like cheap plastic. I want a solid, heavy, mechanical board with real keys.

Also, I’m spoiled because I buy custom keyboards where all the labels and colors and configuration is up to me.

Though, no matter how grippy the rubber and how heavy the board, my keyboards always slide. My solution was to buy 4 long angle brackets and double-sided adhesive, and this proved to be a perfect backstop.

Doubleshot PBT keycaps would be the ideal way to ensure the labels never wear off.

I’ve tried many mechanical and on-mechanical keyboards, but always come back to Apple’s magic keyboard, simply because it’s the thinnest of all. It’s virtually flush with the desk, and I can’t for the love of god get used to anything else. Mechanical keyboards are often quite thick. Palm pads don’t help, I’d still feel my hands are uncomfortably elevated.

> feel my hands are uncomfortably elevated

If you are bending your wrists to type, then you need to reposition or re-orient the keyboard, and/or change your posture or arm position, or you are setting yourself up for RSI.

For most comfortable typing, neither arms, wrists, nor palms should rest on any surface. But the palms should definitely not be resting directly on the table, even with a low-profile keyboard.

Generally it’s a good idea to have the keyboard close to the edge of the table, and oriented so that its surface is parallel to your forearms while typing. With the keyboard relatively close, the upper arms can remain close to the body with the shoulders relaxed, and the torso and head upright.

Most office workers use a desk which is uncomfortably high for typing when sitting on their chair. So the most obvious first thing to try is lowering the desk, installing an under-desk keyboard tray, raising the chair, adding a booster seat above the existing chair, switching to a standing desk, or similar.

If the furniture can’t be changed, then the keyboard must be tilted up at the back so that when the upper arms are kept close to the body, the keyboard surface sits parallel to the forearms. For many office furniture setups this tilt must be very aggressive (think mid-20th-century typewriter).

Office workers often instead compensate for the high desk by pushing their keyboard far in on the desk, with their elbows either extending out to the side or far in front of the body, and either slouching or hunching their backs, and uncomfortably bending their necks. To take strain off their shoulders they rest elbows, forearms, or palms on the table or an armrest or palmrest. All of these workarounds are causing static muscle load and non-neutral joint positions for the back, neck, shoulders, etc. That’s fine for very short bursts for someone who frequently changes position (and better than having bent wrists), but pretty bad for long stretches for someone who sits in more or less the same position throughout the workday.

> can’t for the love of god get used to anything else. Mechanical keyboards are often quite thick. Palm pads don’t help, I’d still feel my hands are uncomfortably elevated.

I’ve had a similar problem (although I’m using Windows). I bought a surface keyboard for its thinness, but my wrists were still at a semi-painful angle when typing.

I looked at many wrist pads, but they’re all “mushy” and not “wide” enough to support my forearms.

So, to deal with the wrist issue, I “built” this (https://imgur.com/a/cYBksBO) from my kids’ Legos. YMMV, but it has worked tremendously well for my wrists and forearms.

The wired older Mac keyboard and the Magic Keyboard 2 are really good, it’s my favorite non-mech keyboard by far and the only keyboard (mechs included) where I can really type and manipulate stuff without thinking at all. I really wish Apple would put their PBT keycaps on Macbook keyboards, they feel so much nicer.

I love the full sized apple magic keyboard. Seems especially silly then how terrible their newfangled MacBook keyboards are.

FYI: The author of this is “not a home row typist”, not mentioned in the article. YMMV if you touch type.

Touch typing and home row typing are different things by the way.

My hands aren’t on the home row but I do type by touch. I don’t look at the keyboard except for a few weird key combos.

Not according to my typing teacher. 😀

Ask him / her if all hot tubs are jacuzzis.

My favorite keyboards is the Microsoft Sculpt Comfort.

I can type for hours without any wrist pain compared to all my other keyboards.

My previous favorite was the Natural 4000 Ergonomic, and now the Sculpt Ergonomic. In both cases, I have had keys wear out* and have gone through quite a few, but like them enough to put up with the trouble. Of course, I could get the 4000 for $20; I tend to have to spend closer to $60 to get the Sculpt!

* The Natural 4000 space bar was the worst offender. On my Sculpt Ergonomic, I’ve lost an ‘L’ and ‘F5’.

I’ve had mixed results with the 4000. I have a Natural 4000 from 1997. Every key still works great. I also bought one in 2016. That one had sticky keys (space) that never worked themselves out. It was by far inferior.

In the easy-to-clean category MS Natural wins easily. I never used the 4000 but my Elite (still work after more than 20 years) can be washed in the dishwasher.

I washed one of my Natural in the dishwasher, and it still worked for a while, but as hard as I tried to make sure it dried afterward, the keys started to feel more “scratchy.” It’s possible this would all be in my head, but I feel like the water did do some level of damage.

It might be the heat you ran the wash at, what temp/setting was it?

Ah sorry this was way too long ago for my memory!

I own this keyboard as well and it is very well designed and very convenient to use, when I’m working outside of home office I’m taking it with me even if there are other keyboards available at the office.

It hits sweet spot – it is slightly curved but not to the extreme where one would have to re-learn how to type, battery also lasts extremely long.
Only issue I have with it is that additional functional keys switch is literally a switch, one needs to change its position to be able to use alternate keys function – for me it would be more convenient to have “Fn” key just like in notebooks keyboards.

Edit: oh and maybe another one – missing physical switch on the back to disable keyboard, now one needs to remove battery or put some scrap of paper/plastic between contacts to completely “power off” device.

I have this keyboard as well, and the original wired MS ergo keyboard before it. I’ve had probably 4 or 5 of the wired one over the years.

I enjoy the Sculpt, enough to buy one for home and office, as well as a replacement when one crapped out (hard to navigate tmux when your prefix key dies!). I can’t type on non-ergo keyboards for very long, my wrist pain almost immediately comes back. I’d probably try an amazon basics ergo keyboard if they made one.

I’m sure I could have saved a few dollars over the years by finding the exact right mechanical keyboard and it would have lasted forever, but I can also go on amazon and order a replacement keyboard and get it by Thursday, and not worry about spilling coffee on my $300 hand-crafted, certified organic mx blueberry waffle keycaps.

Yeh unfortunately I can’t even try any of these boutique keyboards, because they are all inevitably plain rectangles. I don’t know how anyone types on those things without wrist problems. Ergo 4000 or the Sculpt Comfort for me. The 4000 seems to be bombproof, everything is completely polished off the keys at the point, and still going for the past 12 years.

The Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic is my go to.

I wish there were alternatives that I knew of as it is far and away my favorite and I haven’t found much in the way of other options.

I know it’s been mentioned already, but my favorite is the MS Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard. I picked it up when I was starting to have RSI issues in my wrist and forearm. Together with some wrist braces, I was able to eliminate all pain in a few weeks.

When I was looking, my criteria were: comfort, usability (bonus points for a standard layout), and PC/Mac interoperability. The Ergo Sculpt met all of those well, although some individual units seem to not work properly with the Mac.

The best thing is, it only cost $65! Not bad for a tool that’s probably the reason I’m still in the industry 2 years later.

I had a Sculpt keyboard for a month, picking it up for the same reason, but discovered that while it does improve things a bit, the keyboard is still too narrow for me and the keys are still sort of staggered and nondescript.

I eventually settled on a Kinesis Advantage 2 [1] with linear switches and is very happy about that.

[1] – https://kinesis-ergo.com/keyboards/advantage2-keyboard/

I really wanted to love the Sculpt Ergonomic, but even after weeks of using it I found it hard to distinguish all the keys in the “right pinky” area without looking (Return and neighbors). The uniform spacing between keys looks fantastic, but my right hand could never figure out where it was. The F keys suffer from the same problem (no grouping), and are extremely mushy. I’d love to see a redesigned version.

The included mouse feels great, though – at least on Linux, where I could remap the Start button to something useful.

I tried the Kinesis Advantage. There’s a lot to like there, and I really wanted to like it, but the layout got to me. Specifically, keys used in programming like curly braces, etc. didn’t fit my preexisting muscle memory from being a longtime touch typist. I really wanted something I could plug in and just go with, without relearning how to type.

Give it a week or two, I faced the same uphill battle as you but eventually, the layout of the Advantage will payoff.

For me with the Advantage, it was a week before I was mostly back to productive and one month before it completely faded into the background. Love it though. No more pain.

> bonus points for a standard layout…The Ergo Sculpt met all of those well

My main problem with it is that it isn’t a standard layout. For that reason, I went with the Surface Ergonomic instead, which, while still not standard, is more standard than the Sculpt.

What do you find nonstandard about it? I was able to start writing code on mine right away, and I’m a touch typist.

The nav keys, right control key, and function keys are all in the wrong place, and IIRC, all the keys are a bit too small, so I was hitting two at a time sometimes. I also prefer a right hand super key so I can lock my workstation with one hand.

I guess I never really noticed about the nav keys and function keys because I don’t use them much. I would like to have slightly bigger keys, but it’s not enough of a downside to me to use a different keyboard. (Side note: why don’t keyboards come in different sizes by default? Hands come in different sizes, so should keyboards.)

I like a lot about the Surface Ergo, but the lack of any kind of a front riser option was a dealbreaker for me.

I have a Sculpt because it’s a lot easier to take with me for long travel than the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, but it’s a lot less comfortable in my opinion for $30 more.

I had two of the Sculpt keyboards die within about 6 months. Maybe I got a bad batch, but I’m not buying that one again.

> Yes, but I’m not a home row typist so it’s very hard to me to adjust to a wavy or split design keyboard.

So… It’s a surprisingly serviceable keyboard for $14, as long as you don’t know how to type

For what it may be worth to anyone, as someone who prefers an “ergonomic” split keyboard with a softer touch (so my hands and wrists don’t get stiff; I also use a brace on the right hand just when typing), I have used several keyboards, and strongly disliking the Microsoft one (my hands hurt worse: some keys I use heavily like Alt and/or Space felt stiff), I tried a probably inexpensive one I really liked (but left the job that bought it and now I don’t remember the name), sprung for a couple of Kinesis freestyle ones that I loved (one at work, and one at home), then decided to make the leap and actually try the Kinesis Advantage2 (LF), and after rearranging some keys and about a month of use, it feels strange to go back to a “normal” keyboard again, even the Freestyle, though if I did go back it would only be because the keys seem to require a very little more force than the Freestyle. (No other connection to the company.)

There was another interesting split keyboard (“SafeType”) on Amazon that moves the keys to a vertical position, each hand basically facing the other, that is on my someday list to try if I ever get enough desire to spend more money. Now I see that the freestyle can do that too, but I would want some way to rest the forearms during intermittent use.

It’s always interesting how different what is comfortable can be from one person to the next.

I can’t type performantly on non-ergonomic non-split non-tilted keyboards any longer, after ~20 years of typing on split ergo keyboards. The way that straight keyboards orient my wrists causes discomfort within an hour or two of use.

In my case the Microsoft battleship keyboard, the 4000, is the only thing I find comfortable. I can type on it all day with zero stress on my wrists or hands. Anything else and I suffer noticeable hand & wrist stress after a full day of work. The base of my hand / wrist area also likes the subtle padding on the 4000, it’s just enough to provide some additional comfort without being annoying.

The Freestyle is a wonderful keyboard indeed. The freely adjustable angle (+ distance if you need it) between the halves makes for a great typing feel.

I used to go for Microsoft split-ergo, and before that, the Logitech split one until it was discontinued. No more. FS2 may look funny but it’s great for hands and the silent caps don’t cause aural disturbances either.

The Microsoft ergonomic keyboards have been on a long, slow decline since they first came out in the mid-’90s. The original Natural/Natural Elite/Natural Pro keyboards were fantastic, real tanks. Those eventually devolved into the Natural 4000/7000, which had the same good layout as the originals but soft, mushy keyswitches that would fail if you looked at them funny. And those eventually devolved into the modern Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard, which mated the mushy keyswitches with skinny laptop-style keycaps (ugh), and merged the function keys and media keys into a single row of keys that you have to use a switch to move from one mode to the other.

If Microsoft were to bring back the original Natural keyboard today and just replace the PS/2 connector with a USB one, it’d single-handedly improve the line more than 20 years of redesigns have managed to.

I eWasted all my old MS Naturals in favor of the Sculpt. Yeah, the function key switch sucks, but other than that I prefer the sculpt. I see the reduced key travel as a benefit. Extra travel does nothing but slow me down and require me to move my joints more. Sure, I like the satisfying feel of mechanical switches, but not when I’m pushing them thousands of times an hour.

The problem with the MS Natural is that the shape of the keyboard, as compared to standard, goes away from your fingers the farther you are away from your middle finger. Kinesis Advantage does it the opposite, meaning that your fingers have to travel less to reach all the keys.

The Sculpt was really close to being a worthy successor in my mind, but they totally screwed up the FN keys.

They are a different size, height, and actuation. A real killer for people who actually use FN keys.

I would buy one immediately. And hell, they brought back the Intellimouse, so it’s not unprecedented.

I like keyboards with built-in USB hubs. Some Lenovo keyboards have this.

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-73P2620-Enhanced-Performance-K…

My favorite keyboard is a silicone roll-up keyboard. I first got one probably fifteen years ago as a result of my brother getting in a fight with me and pulling the cord out of the keyboard we had. The Radio Shack in town only had this odd blue silicone roll up keyboard, so we bought it.

Turns out it’s basically silent to type on, which was very nice at the time because my dad would always wake up from the keyboard noise and get after us to go to sleep.

Served the same useful purpose in college when I had roommates.

The thing these days that I like most about it is that it’s completely flat, which means I can rest my wrists on the desk and not get weird RSI issues from my wrists being out of alignment.

The main complaint people have ever had about using it is that it forces you to learn how to hit the keys exactly on center because just hitting them on the edge will cause the silicone to buckle without hitting the switch. Really I think it’s made me a better typist overall.

They do tend to break maybe every five years or so. More often if you pick it up or attempt to at all take advantage of the “roll up” feature.

Also it’s sealed, so if something spills on it, you just needs to wipe it up and no harm done.

I vaguely recall using one once, ages ago, but don’t the keys take quite a bit of force to press? Maybe it was just a cheap one I was on …

I guess I don’t really notice it being much different from say a laptop keyboard, but I suppose maybe it does take a bit more force to push the keys down. Not a metric that I ever really considered being important or not in a keyboard, I guess.

I don’t even remember why scroll lock exists

It’s an early implementation of the same idea as the mouse scroll wheel. Engage scroll lock, and the arrow keys are used for scrolling the current text view instead of moving the cursor.

The idea of also using it to pause scrolling console text, I think, originated in Linux.

There was a PC Magazine utility from the 80s, WAITASEC.COM, that allowed you to use Scroll Lock to page through command output that had scrolled off the screen.

On a Linux/Unix non-X system terminal, enabling Scroll Lock makes the Up and Down arrows function like a scroll wheel instead of iterating over command history like they usually would.

I think only Lotus 1-2-3 actually used it, but Lotus 1-2-3 was literally the entire reason to use early PCs. With Scroll Lock active, in Lotus the movement keys would shift the whole spreadsheet, keeping the current cell highlight steady on the screen, rather than move the current cell highlight.

It’s handy to lock your cursor on the right PC if you use Synergy [1] but aside from that I’ve never used it

[1] https://symless.com/synergy

At this point: Excel users.

On fullsize keyboards, Num Lock is less useful than Scroll Lock.

Numlock would make a lot more sense if fullsize keyboards both didn’t have arrow keys at all and also split the 0 numpad key into numlock & 0, so that way it’s easier/simpler/ergonomic to toggle. We could also do away with Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, Delete, and Insert, since they’re already integrated into the numlock key.

The numlock key exists today because of the keyboard layout of the original IBM PC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_Model_F_XT.png).

That original keyboard did not have separate arrow and pgup/pgdown (cursor control) keys, and numlock was how one toggled between the calculator keypad being ‘numbers’ vs. cursor controls (see the image above). The current ‘separated’ cursor controls and number pad layout arrived sometime during the IBM AT era, and at that point the ‘numlock’ key started to make less sense. It was kept around for backwards compatibility with old software that used the state of the numlock key to change its behavior (and/or that relied on the exact scan codes output by the number keypad in combination with the state of the numlock bit).

You see, my comment was made because I do believe that numlock makes sense. The ANSI layout is wider than it needs to be because of duplicate keys separating the main area from the numpad. Remove those keys, move the numpad further in, put numlock in a more ergonomic spot, and now they everyday keyboard has become more compact, ergonomic, and useful.

I knew, but had always wondered why anyone needed it.

Then, one day, on a bare terminal, output was flying by that I needed to read. The lightbulb went on, and I pressed the key.

I map it to lock the screen which makes so much more sense!

Thank baby jeebus for Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroll_Lock

>> Robust Wire / USB Cable

This is one cost-cutting area that drives me nuts. As the PC price wars raged on, keyboards got cheaper and cheaper. Wires got thinner, and shorter. HP/Dell give you something like a 3 foot cable these days. You can’t keep your PC on the floor or route around monitors anmymore.

I liked the old days, where you got a 6+ feet long cord on your keyboard.

I wish they had a tenkeyless edition, so it would be worth a try 🙂

Having mouse too far at the right side or adjust to using left hand for mouse does not seem to be a good tradeoff just to have a numpad, which gets close to zero use.

filco ninja majestouch tenkeyless with silent red mx cherrys is definitely better at every aspect than this amazon basic kb (except the price).

They gave me one of these at work and I gave it back. One of the worst keyboards I have ever used. Awful mushy chicklet keys, short key throw, the whole thing flexes with finger pressure. Its cheap rebranded junk.

These are just things that most generic keyboards already have.

I see no reason why anyone should buy this keyboard over the one that probably came with their computer.

Unique features, like doubleshot keycaps, N-key rollover, layers and macros, actuation that is seperated from the bottom-out, good build quality, and more can all be found on a decent mechanical keyboard.

Also, mechanical keyboards don’t have to be loud!
Linear and tactile Matias switches, Cherry MX/Gateron silents, and Topre are all great keyswitches that are as quiet, if not more, than your standard rubber dome.

IMO, that keyboard feels terrible. There’s a reason it’s so cheap. I use it for some local servers where I rarely (almost never) need to be at the console.

I’m really surprised that ergonomic, split-key designs aren’t more popular. Do you all enjoy unnaturally squishing your hands or something? Fans of RSI?

Some of us just don’t get that. I’ve been typing at around 120wpm since my Typing II course on an actual typewriter back in ’98. With every other part of my body degrading far faster than I ever would have expected it to, my wrists and hands still feel right as rain while using a standard keyboard layout.

At least so far, I’ve won that lottery. I’ll take it.

Maybe it’s just because my keyboard is >15 times as expensive but I have an extremely hard time believing that the Amazon keyboard is in the same league. I can’t help but feel like if the author unironically prefers a $15 keyboard (and believes that mechanical keyboards are all loud) then maybe he shouldn’t be writing a blog post about keyboards because he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.