
Sonder: E-Ink Keyboard - tosh
https://sonderdesign.com/keyboard/
======
yosito
I see lots of people commenting that this sort of keyboard is a gimmick
because it's a waste of time to look at keys while you type. As a programmer,
I get that logic. But there are times when I would 100% love a keyboard that
could allow me to use different key layouts and visually see the layout. The
first use-case for me is when switching language layouts. I'm tri-lingual and
use different keyboard layouts to be able to type characters in other
languages. But every time I switch languages, I forget where the punctuation
and other symbol keys have moved to. It's a pain in the ass to have to switch
layouts just because I can't remember where a question mark or a curly bracket
is in the language I'm using. Second, occasionally do design and video editing
on the side. Not often enough to memorize keyboard shortcuts like I do with
programming. But especially with video editing, if you're not using keyboard
shortcuts and hunting through menus instead, the work is extremely slowed
down. Lastly, games. I game from time to time, but each game I play has
different controls mapped to the keyboard. I can't usually remember more than
4 or 5 controls for the duration of a gaming session, so being able to see
what's what would make my gaming experience much more enjoyable.

All that being said, I'm not holding my breath for this keyboard. The design
isn't polished enough, I doubt software support for my use cases will be
common any time soon, and I just don't see hundreds of little screens being
cost effective or reliable hardware. I hope I'm wrong though.

~~~
BiteCode_dev
Plus I can totally see plenty of applications for it:

\- fn keys that show what mode you are in. I never know if I'm going to hit F3
or "sound up".

\- locking keys: is uppercase is locked or not? Am I at one press for ` ? Have
I triggered ^ ?

\- show special char combinations: press alt-gr, and the keyboard show you the
signs like €, ¤ or | that you can enter.

\- per app shortcut displays: imagine, you click ctrl + and all other keys
change to show what they can do.

\- game shortcuts: when you launch it wasd become arrows, shift become jump,
etc

~~~
afandian
This is what the Macbook touchbar is for (with, granted, no tactility). And,
to put it mildly, it divides opinion. I really miss my muscle memory for media
keys on my mac.

~~~
todd8
I hate the touchbar. I am a professional programmer and need all the keys I
can get. The touchbar removed a number of keys that I used with Emacs, and in
return I get little tiny picture that I have to look at before using. Right
now the Touch Bar is mostly showing the three words that my Mac thinks I might
be typing next based on the prefix that I've already typed. Really? Does it
think that after typing D followed by o as I start this sentence that I want
to look at the touchbar to see it's guesses and then press 'Does' to save
typing the e key followed by the s key. Its a totally stupid feature on a
keyboard for people that know how to type.

~~~
clairity
i wonder if it has more utility if the suggestions were restricted to words
longer than, say, 6 letters, where spelling confusion might slow down typing
enough to make the tradeoff?

------
jrockway
Their website won't load, but it looks like they've been working on a
prototype of a keyboard that has e-ink displays on each switch since around
2016.

This has been attempted before:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard)
but with LCDs (or maybe they were OLEDs, since all the reviewers complain
about burn-in). The reviews were overwhelmingly negative and you can pick one
up cheap used because nobody wants them.

Overall, I find these designs awfully expensive on many fronts. Looking at the
keyboard is a huge productivity sink, and if you stop looking at the keyboard,
you won't care what the legends look like. And, having 101 screens attached to
your keyboard is pretty costly compared to having 0 screens. I think these
make for a good conversation piece, but I'm not sure you'd prefer typing on
them to a keyboard with a better layout and better switches. And if you want a
macro pad, just get a stream deck, which you can buy with same-day shipping
instead of crowdfunding it. (Or just build your own. There are tons of kits
out there that cost on the order of $10. No per-key screens though.)

~~~
thomastjeffery
I could see them being useful for keyboard designs with very few keys, like
[https://olkb.com/collections/planck](https://olkb.com/collections/planck).

If you have deeply-nested layers, having some way to identify what state your
keyboard is in can be helpful. Having screens instead of LEDs is definitely an
expensive luxury, though.

~~~
jrockway
True. Personally I have 3 LEDs on my keyboard that I use to show the current
layer (in binary). I then carefully numbered my layers so that I use 0, 1, 2,
and 4 in preference to others ;)

------
TheRealPomax
And here I was hoping it was a normal keyboard, with eink key caps. Instead
it's what looks like the worst possible design for implementing a solidly
obvious idea.

(I still don't know why people tried this with LED screen keycaps instead of
doing eink first, and then were surprised a $250, one-trick keyboard didn't
fly off the shelves)

~~~
ashtonkem
$250 is a perfectly acceptable price for the keyboard enthusiast space; but
that’s not a massive market compared to regular keyboards.

~~~
TheRealPomax
As a keyboard enthusiast: not really. $250 is daily driver territory, not
"kickstarter keyboard" pricing.

~~~
ashtonkem
My daily driver is $350, so yeah.

Just saying that you can charge some pretty high prices to enthusiasts.

------
moron4hire
This reddit poster is not very encouraging
[https://www.reddit.com/r/keyboards/comments/ae8x4u/eink_keyb...](https://www.reddit.com/r/keyboards/comments/ae8x4u/eink_keyboard_the_sonder_scam/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body)

~~~
fermienrico
This whole thing sounds like scam. I don't think this keyboard is possible to
make at $199. Every piece of eink display under the cap costs a few bucks.
Then you need insane custom switching board to multiplex all these displays
with SPI lines. Probably needs an FPGA to do it fast and reliably. The raw BOM
cost alone will be $100 or more.

Fabbing a custom size eink display will cost $200K in tooling + R&D if only
they could find a fab that is willing to do sub 100k MOQ orders. Otherwise, it
is upwards of $500k. The thing is, no other customer will ever buy a 12x12mm
eink display since it is too small to do anything useful, so the eink display
manf cannot ammortize the cost of a new line spin up and tooling. It has to be
captured and it will be costly.

~~~
masklinn
> This whole thing sounds like scam. I don't think this keyboard is possible
> to make at $199. Every piece of eink display under the cap costs a few
> bucks.

It would most likely have a single large display, like the Optimus Popularis.
Uglier and less convenient, but way the hell cheaper.

~~~
mschuster91
You still pay through your nose for large eInk displays though. I don't get
what the fuck makes them so expensive... probably patent issues.

~~~
bransonf
I'd guess low demand as well. Compared to any other type of screen, eInk is
extremely niche. E-Readers and some mass produced wearables (Pebble) made it
work, but even those had a fairly small market.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Pebble wasn't eink, weirdly enough; it was a "Sharp Memory transflective LCD"
(which did have very similar properties, granted).

------
Stratoscope
Does anyone remember the Samsung Alias 2? It was a dual-hinge flip phone with
e-ink keys. When you flipped it open in portrait mode, the keys would display
a number pad, and if you opened it in landscape mode the key labels changed to
a QWERTY layout.

Photos:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=samsung+alias+2&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=samsung+alias+2&tbm=isch)

Details:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_U750_Alias_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_U750_Alias_2)

~~~
a-wu
I had both the Alias and Alias 2. I absolutely loved the Alias because it was
so great for texting. The Alias 2 was a cool idea but I felt that the e-ink
key refresh was too slow and the keys were mushy.

------
nihilazo
the website doesn't even work for me but I looked up some images, and even if
this thing actually exists and isn't vaporware, it looks like a truly bad
keyboard. All the things that actually matter in a keyboard (key feel, travel,
ergonomics) are all things this design gets dead wrong. It seems mostly
modelled after the apple mac keyboard (which has awful key feel and even worse
ergonomics) and to be incredibly short-travel. The design also seems to have
no respect at all for any ergonomics improvements made to keyboards in the
past 20 years.

Also, anybody buying a high-end keyboard will probably be able to touch type
anyway, so what is the point of this product even? When you're using a
computer, you're looking at your display, not your keyboard.

~~~
thomastjeffery
It's really unfortunate to see how tightly product designers hold on to the
traditional staggered-typewriter layout.

People tend to believe that more esoteric designs won't sell, but the $300+
model01 I'm typing this comment with begs to differ. It seems to me like they
are targeting the wrong market.

~~~
uncletaco
My ergodox, lily58, atreus, and soon sofle also beg to differ.

~~~
thomastjeffery
Sofle looks nice. I really like the idea of having dials on-board.

The only thing I would miss is the thumb-cluster design of the Model01. Having
thumb keys a little farther to the side, and having a thumb-knuckle key is
really comfortable.

The extra portability of the lily58/sofle design would be nice, though.

------
dang
See also:

2016
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830307)

2015
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9809906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9809906)

and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9688646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9688646)

------
missosoup
That keyboard has been 'available soon' on the sonder site for at least 4
years now. Going to go ahead and call vaporware.

------
plerpin
Professional applications, e.g. video nonlinear editing, have a huge number of
shortcut keys. You can buy entire keyboards with colored key caps that are
labeled with shortcuts for a single application like Final Cut Pro.

Would be great for that.

------
wishinghand
Apparently there’s some debate whether or not this is a real product, but if
it is, I’d love this in a compact keyboard form like a Kyria, Lily58, or
Corne. Those keyboards are less than 60 keys so they require layers to get at
what doesn’t fit on the default layout.

This sounds like a hassle but ergonomically it’s very good! Your fingers
travel and stretch less this way. Someone asked me if I type as fast or faster
with my Ergodox. I told them I don’t measure but that’s not even the biggest
feature, but the fact that I’m not moving my whole hand up to the number row
for digits and symbols.

The downside to this is that layers are deeply personal and changing them can
bring some friction as a user re-learns the layout. I’ve resorted to
screenshotting and printing my layers at times when I try a new paradigm.
Having dynamic key labels would be a godsend for this sort of keyboard-user
relationship.

~~~
codethief
> Those keyboards are less than 60 keys so they require layers to get at what
> doesn’t fit on the default layout.

This is the one reason that has kept me from switching to an
ergodox/keyboard.io/… keyboard. I want _as many keys as possible_ , not fewer!
For instance, I would never buy a keyboard without a proper row of function
keys. I'm already finding it hard to decide what to bind them to because there
are so many things I use and need on a regular basis…

> This sounds like a hassle but ergonomically it’s very good!

It's not. The fewer keys you have, the more you'll be inclined to resort to
key combinations for your window manager / editor / … and these are generally
bad from an ergonomic point of view. Even with multiple key board layers or
modal editing, you still have to press far more keys to get done what on a
larger keyboard would take you one single key stroke.

~~~
wishinghand
Hard disagree on the smaller keyboards being less ergonomic, at least from
anecdata. Plus even with something as simple as a Corne, that’s 108 keys with
a raise and lower layer at its most basic. With that in mind your desire for
more keys is attained!

------
kumarvvr
The idea, if implemented well, is amazing. Most helpful for typing in native
languages, other than english. The software on the desktop can update / modify
keys based on user interactions and options.

Can anyone tell me of any vendors for those tiny e-ink screens?

I have been looking forever for screens that can fit into a keycaps.

edit: Even non e-ink screens are ok.

edit: Upon closer inspection of the images, and more importantly, their
library page, it looks like they have a giant e-ink screen and transparent
keys. This is a clever design and I would consider it a win if the mechanical
performance of the keys is on par with regular keyboards.

------
easytiger
It's a scam and has been around for years

------
andrepd
Such a cool idea wasted in copying a trash design... Pity. Apple keyboards are
the worst in several aspects.

------
beyondcompute
Great concept but to me does not make that much sense. Because there are no
extra keys. So what is the point of having re-programmable keys if you’ll have
to reprogram the keys that you are already using? Function keys are not so
useful as they are too far away from main typing area (at least for me). An
extra vertical row of keys on the left however would be great. I would order
such a keyboard. (Currently I am using an International English one and
there’s an extra key, § which I re-programmed with different modifiers for
several functions. A whole row of extra keys would be just amazing!)

------
peterhi
This looked nice. I really want a keyboard that changes it's keycaps when I
change language. But then I read this bit "all your settings are saved
automatically to the cloud"

WTF! My keyboard requires cloud access?

No. Just no

------
Gravityloss
Great, finally programming languages can expect even beginners to keep typing
characters like ⊢ with little difficulty. Your editor plugin will also include
keyboard customization.

------
WhatIsDukkha
This is kind of cool but I think has the same problem (though does it better)
then the apple function bar thing.

I don't want to look at my hands as I'm working, I want to look at what I'm
doing.

Icons on keys also force me to lift my hands from the homerow as 80% of them
are obscured by your hand positions.

The value of having the shortcuts on the keys isn't very high compared to a
higher quality keyboard and onscreen cheatsheet if needed.

------
maxpert
I believe if Apple can replace the stupid touch-bar with a row of e-ink keys.
That will solve a lot of my problems. I myself have been imagining such a
keyboard for longest time; happy to see somebody is thinking in same
direction. This can be awesome thing for POS, and domain specific software
getting rid of those finger twisting combinations.

------
fortran77
I'd love a full travel keyboard. I'm not sure "Keyboard Enthusiasts" want a
Mac style keyboard.

While I don't often need to look at keys when doing normal typing, I still do
when programming APL. And I never remember the keys when using After Effects /
Premiere. Having programmable caps would be nice.

------
radarsat1
I just want to be able to use emacs with an e-ink display... any little
machines out there for that?

~~~
Y_Y
You can put ssh on a jailbroken kindle

~~~
radarsat1
I thought about that, is it possible to use it with a bluetooth keyboard?

------
manquer
This keyboard can be useful to learn Dvorak or other non qwerty systems of
typing while still being able to quickly change back and forth. Many Keyboard
covers come in the way of typing, especially when trying to up your speed with
Dvorak.

------
hprotagonist
I'm pretty stoked for my Atreus, shipping (hopefully) this fall.

[https://kickstarter.com/projects/keyboardio/atreus](https://kickstarter.com/projects/keyboardio/atreus)

~~~
Tepix
Mine shipped yesterday! Really looking forward to learning it.

~~~
hprotagonist
I ordered after the kickstarter ended, so it'll be a while for me. It's ok, i
have split boards to play with in the meantime.

------
JVIDEL
Not all the keys can change and the ones that can't are all Mac ones which
limits the adoption of Windows users which like it or not are still the vast
majority

------
elric
Reminds me of that OLED keyboard ... Optimus I believe it was called ... I
wonder if anything ever came of that, or if it's still vaporware.

~~~
notatoad
it was a real product. possibly still is. IIRC it was over $1000 by the time
they released it, and it wasn't a very good keyboard.

the much cooler thing that came out of that project was the "mini 3":
[https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/mini-
three/](https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/mini-three/)

(side note - their website has possibly the best cookie disclosure on the
internet)

~~~
masklinn
The Mini 3 was basically the original demo of the concept.

The studio then released the full-size Maximus for $2068 using an OLED per
key.

They later released the Popularis, originally intended as a cheaper sub-$1000
model using a single large OLED for all keys. They did end up releasing it but
with various additional tradeoffs (a "compact" keyboard without a numpad) and
at a fairly expensive $1086.

Concurrently, they released cut-down keypads with 6 and 15 keys, also at
fairly expensive $376 and $534.

------
cordite
I’d like this but with the typematrix layout, which is ortholinear and with
enter and backspace in the center.

------
mangecoeur
Cheaper than Apple's magic keyboard who's gimmick is... magnets! >_<

------
bhewes
Sweet, I would program this thing for blender and resolve.

------
orliesaurus
What's the point of Eink on a keyboard? Anyone stare at their keyboard for
hours at a time? Isn't Eink is supposed to help you read without screen
fatigue?

Why not make Eink spoons and forks next? /sarcasm

~~~
packet_nerd
Learning to type in a new language maybe?

I've used stickers for that before[1] but it would cool to be able change the
labels on the keys automatically. :-)

[1] Like this: [https://www.amazon.com/HRH-Keyboard-Stickers-Background-
Lett...](https://www.amazon.com/HRH-Keyboard-Stickers-Background-
Lettering/dp/B076FX1HHH/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=thai+keyboard+stickers&qid=1590947914&sr=8-4)

~~~
Stratoscope
Original IBM PC users may remember a program from 1983 called WordVision that
came with keyboard stickers. There's a picture of the sticker sheet here:

[https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/10869/software-
spotl...](https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/10869/software-spotlight-
wordvision)

It was an idea that really only worked if WordVision was the only app you used
on the PC. Plus the stickers got dirty around the edges and came loose after a
while.

Fun fact: WordVision was designed by Jim Edlin, no relation to the 'edlin'
command line text editor that shipped with MS-DOS and PC-DOS.

