
Ask HN: Most comfortable keyboard? - quantumpotato_
I use Microsoft Ergonomic 4000.
They keys take a lot to press, so I&#x27;m considering a mechanical keyboard like a rat7.<p>However, I feel the layout of most keyboards (rectangular) isn&#x27;t adapted to a natural form of my hands (more open, spread away from the torso instead of closed in).<p>What&#x27;s the best keyboard for long-term programming?
======
kps
I'm a fan of the Kinesis contoured keyboards, which I've been using for 15
years now.

The two major keyboard fora, which you can use to help research and discuss
what would suit you, are [http://deskthority.net/](http://deskthority.net/)
and [http://geekhack.org/](http://geekhack.org/)

~~~
jrmiii
I second the Kinesis - although, I could never get into the foot pedals.

~~~
jfb
I have one of the foot pedals, and I use it sometimes, but mostly to shock my
coworkers. I never really got into the hang of using it in my day to day life.

------
pasbesoin
For me, not layout but key force and travel became problems. I've ended up
with a Kensington keyboard... Ci73 that has a "low profile" and "laptop-type"
keys/keyswitches. Much better...

The 73 is wired. They also make a wireless model; however, wireless keyboards
have had security issues, particularly at the time I settled on the
Kensington, and so I avoided wireless.

I have it adjusted to the "right height" behind a 3M gel wristpad model that,
unfortunately, is no longer made.

Amongst the choices in this category, note that IBM and now Lenovo make a
ThinkPad style external keyboard. The last I checked, there were two
revisions. I think the former had an integrated trackpad while the latter did
not. Opinions varied as to which was better.

YMMV. But for some, it may be worth considering key action and travel,
particularly if you've ever found yourself favoring a laptop keyboard (perhaps
before so many of them went "chiclet") over a desktop/external keyboard.

------
GoNB
I have a Noppoo Choc Mini. It's on the quieter side of mechanical keyboards
(Cherry Reds). It's more of a typing/gaming keyboard, but I can still type
110+ WPM consistently and without pain.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0091QOCNA/ref=wms_ohs_prod...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0091QOCNA/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

If you're looking to reduce RSI/wrist pain, I found that far more important
than a keyboard is your posture and arm position. More or less:
[http://www.egodevelopment.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/03/4.j...](http://www.egodevelopment.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/03/4.jpg) (I would actually have my monitor a tad higher
than in that picture)

------
jfb
It depends. I've used a lot in the ~20 years or so I've been programming; and
I've come over the last decade or so to rely on the Kinesis Advantage. The big
reason I chose it when I did is because it doesn't force your wrists into a
positive angle, which always causes me pain.

I used to use a Model M or one of its derivatives; I also spent a lot of time
on the old Sun keyboards. I never found the key action to be as important to
my continued health as the physical design; I also don't use a custom layout.
I'm happy with my choices, although occasionally I try something new.

------
meerita
A mechanical one, for sure. Then, what it would matter it's the type of the
switches. I use black ones, because I like gaming and it's what its for but i
code a lot with it. It depends on your taste.

Probably the most comfortable but expensive ones are the Topre's capacitive
switches, used on Happy Hacking keyboards, they're a mix of best quality,
comfort and healthy keyboards you can acquire.

For coding, writing, experts recommend blue or brown switches, but in the end,
it is our own taste what it will matter.

------
codereflection
I've been a fan of the Kinesis Freestyle keyboards for years
[http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/freestyle2.htm](http://www.kinesis-
ergo.com/freestyle2.htm).

They're a little more expensive than most, but totally worth the price. I
never could get used to the MS Ergo keyboards, same experience, the keys take
too much effort. Bonus, all of my wrist pain as disappeared since switching to
the Freestyle.

------
mushrew
[http://ergodox.org/](http://ergodox.org/) you can get more info at
[http://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/split-ergonomic-
keyboard-...](http://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/split-ergonomic-keyboard-
project-t1753.html) or geekhack.org/index.php?topic=22780.0;nowap

It's open source, but I purchased my own DIY kit a few months ago from
massdrop.com

~~~
mheathr
I second this, and I would third this if possible; I obtained mine through
massdrop as well.

Having suffered from debilitating RSI at one point that took several months to
even moderately recover from, an ergonomically sound keyboard (along with
other habits) is a necessary step for satisfying best practices and not having
to change careers as a result.

RSI is an extremely annoying and potentially career ending injury that is not
resolvable fully through surgery, so doing everything possible to avoid ever
having that is very smart.

If you ever have it you will wish you went with the ounce of prevention rather
than the pound of cure route.

At one point the injury was so bad that I could not even read a book or touch
a surface without searing pain; any force on my hands was agony basically and
empathizing with people who have physical disabilities is accessible at a
whole new level.

An unfortunate side effect of RSI/CTS is that while you appear perfectly
healthy to external observers you are incapable of actually doing the same
things a healthy individual can without worsening the injury and prolonging
recovery in addition to the searing pain.

So be prepared for strange looks in some social situations from those unaware
of your ailment.

Anyways, the ErgoDox keyboard is currently the state of the art if ergonomics
is being maximized for, all other keyboards are either completely
incompetently designed and effectively not designed for human beings or suffer
from more flaws than the ErgoDox does.

Researching ergonomic keyboards and ways to help recover from my injury as
well as avoiding having the same thing happen again revealed that most
keyboards had show stopping design flaws inherited from typewriters or as a
result of maximizing for cost and ease of manufacturing rather than quality
and usability.

As someone who wants to avoid re-injuring myself, uses a keyboard heavily, and
uses emacs and vim as much as possible I choose what keyboard to use based on
these qualities:

1) Modifier keys (shift, alt, control, and in my case option fn as well as
another key to act as a fifth modifier so that I have hyper and super keys in
emacs) must be accessible by the strongest digit humans have: the thumb.

Designing modifier keys such that they are solely accessed by the pinky while
the other fingers remain on the home row, the least durable digit, is utterly
bereft of intelligence.

The Kinesis Advantage and the ErgoDox satisfy this property.

2) Modifier keys must have a mirrored layout such that they exist in the same
location on both sides of the keyboard.

The ErgoDox* and Kinesis advantage satisfy this property as well as the Truly
Ergonomic.

The Truly Ergonomic does not feature an island for thumb keys though.

* Note that the ErgoDox is the only one that satisfies this if the user needs more than three modifier keys (alt, shift, ctrl).

3) When the hands are on the home row, the entire hand and forearm must be
aligned perpendicular to the keys,* deviating from this is main contributor to
RSI and why in part laptop keyboards are not comfortable to use for long
periods of time.

Split keyboard designs are the best design for satisfying this requirement for
as many users' body types as possible as the different halves can be arranged
the appropriate width apart.

The split keyboard design is rarely found due to manufacturing complexity as
well as increased component cost.

That requirement is why most keyboards can be immediately crossed for not
being designed for humans.

The ErgoDox satisfies this property; as the degree of deviation from
perpendicular alignment the worse the keyboard is to use in practice.

* Note that in the case of the fingers their differing lengths may be taken account for via a sunken key design which the Kinesis Advantage utilized where the fingers curl inward comfortably

Ideally, the keyboard design would also be such that it is trivially
disassembled for regular maintenance, such as removing the grime that develops
over time from using the device, however I have not found any keyboard which
actually has this property; it is on my wish list for a keyboard.

4) While the fourth one is not necessarily a requirement, it is very nice to
have and an expectation. I expect the keyboard to have quality components,
which means no rubber dome switches used. Buckling springs, mechanical
switches, or capacitive switches satisfy this.

Ergonomically speaking, capacitive switches require the least force to trigger
a key input, however they also have no tactile feedback by themselves and as a
result there is no indication while touch typing that the key was actually
pressed.

Capacitive switches are the least popular due to their cost and also the need
to modify them to have some sort of tactile feedback so that the user does not
bottom out the keys.

Cherry MX switches are the most popular among quality keyboards, however there
are other mechanical switches available such as the Topre ones.

What switches the user will prefer varies; however the user can modify them to
require less force to depress or have greater tactile feedback if they wish or
simply swap them out for another switch that still fits the keyboard. The
Cherry MX switches fit the ErgoDox.

Personally, I like the Cherry MX Blues, but the Cherry MX Brows that the
Kinesis Advantage uses also had a nice feel; your mileage may vary here.

On top of the switches and springs used, the keycaps can be independently
sourced and swapped out through various manufacturers; depending on the
manufacturing process the keycaps will have different properties, some having
a flat design that appears on the DAS keyboard, others having a depressed
surface.

While an entirely aesthetic choice, keycaps also come in many different
colors; so if the user wants keycaps with pink elephants etched on top the
surface that is possible.

So far, the ErgoDox keyboard has been the keyboard I have found the least
flaws with, and I now use it over my Kinesis Advantage all the time except
when traveling, at which point I am resigned to the unfortunate keyboard
design laptops have.

The one flaw the ErgoDox has is that the island of thumb keys are not all
comfortable and not awkward to access while having the fingers on the home
row.

I think that the Grand Piano keyboard design
([http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=44940.0](http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=44940.0))
will rectify that issue though, and I am very anxious to actually be able to
purchase a keyboard that utilizes the design as a result.

I love my ErgoDox and consider it state of the art as previously mentioned,
however Acidfire's design would have all of the features I like about the
ErgoDox while fixing the issue with the thumb key placement that the ErgoDox
and Kinesis Advantage have.

Fixing that will cause the thumb keys to be even more ergonomic for users like
myself that want a control, shift, alt, fn, and a fifth mirrored key that is
comfortable to use frequently in chords (a prominent design property in
computing outside of designs employed by vi/vim).

I wish laptops followed the same design somehow while still not being massive
in scale to accommodate that.

An 11" or 13" laptop with retina or better resolution with sufficient battery
life to last 12+ hours per charge and an ergonomic keyboard available without
using an external device is my ideal laptop, unfortunately such a laptop does
not actually exist, so I will have to make due with only having 2 of those
wants until then.

In addition to using an ergonomic keyboard though, I also regularly take
breaks from using my hands, especially from typing and gaming, and use the
colemak layout.

The workman programmer layout is hypothetically an even nicer layout for
English, however not having that layout available by default in any OS is a
deal breaker, so I use the colemak layout for that reason.

Using an alternative layout has not resulted in issues with touch typing in
qwerty still, I can switch between the two fluently still; I was somewhat
concerned that touch typing with a qwerty layout would become an issue
starting out, but in practice it has not been a problem whatsoever.

I also use evil-mode in emacs and make use of meta, hyper, super, escape,
shift, and control so that I can use key chords that only consist of a
sequence of one modifier key plus a one non-modifier key in the vast majority
of cases.

Having a hyper and super key in emacs allows me to avoid experiencing as much
collisions that occur with default key bindings in emacs due to ctrl, meta,
and shift becoming so overloaded in modes; I also abstract out common commands
between modes to use the same chords consistently as they are not unified
across emacs modes by default regrettably.

Doing so greatly reduces the solution space and required learning curve when
changing between modes and states and implementing new features.

Aside from being a vim refugee, still using vim for some tasks, and being as
lazy as possible to the point of aggressively eliminating anything that is
redundant, potentially automated, and reducing what is reducible in effort,
the reason I use evil-mode is that having access to vim's modal design makes
per state bindings available as well as per mode bindings.

As a result not only do I have chords that are composed of merely two keys to
issue a command thanks to having a hyper and super keys, I also often have to
press only one button to accomplish a task thanks to the potency of vim's
grammar.

All of these habits come together for a very comfortable and efficient
computing experience with as little hazard as possible to my health without a
career change, plus I have access to C-x M-c M-butterfly
([https://xkcd.com/378/](https://xkcd.com/378/)).

------
ScottWhigham
I liked the MS Ergo but, due to an office change, needed a wireless keyboard.
I switched to the Logitech wireless keyboard and have absolutely hated it. The
keys are too small and I make so many mistakes while coding, and that's after
a year with it. Whatever you buy, check the size against the MSFT keyboard so
that you don't do what I did: get stuck with a keyboard that's too small for
you.

------
talles
I always wanted a HHK (happy hacking keyboard,
[http://www.pfusystems.com/embedded-
keyboard/hhkb/index.html](http://www.pfusystems.com/embedded-
keyboard/hhkb/index.html)), but it seems impossible to get one around here
(Brazil).

At home I use a razer cyclosa (not mechanical, but feels really good though).
At work I use a dell keyboard (with a huge spacebar, I love it).

------
Sealy
I actually prefer the feel of laptop style keys so the apple keyboards get my
vote. I find the low travel and light weight touch is easier on RSI.

------
c54
Having mechanical switches is a mandatory keyboard feature for me (and I'm
sure it wouldn't be hard to find others who agree)

If you want to go all out get one of these
[http://www.trulyergonomic.com/](http://www.trulyergonomic.com/) (ergonomic,
kinda different keyboard layout, mechanical switches). There'd be a definite
learning curve.

------
deadfall
I had a coworker swear by the Das Keyboard. Very pricey but was nice on the
fingers and reduce typing noise. I have had this on my list of things to buy.
I use a cheap HP SK-2880 keyboard meow but it is pretty comfortable.

[http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-
ultimate/](http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-ultimate/)

------
digisth
I've been using the Kinesis Maxim for years, and I highly recommend it. It's
split, adjustable (both width and height), has great keying, and is very
sturdy:

[http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/max-spec.htm](http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/max-
spec.htm)

------
iron_ball
The Microsoft Natural is my pick. Split enough for ergonomics, good key
response, not very expensive.

[http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-A11-00337-Natural-
Keyboard-E...](http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-A11-00337-Natural-Keyboard-
Elite/dp/B0000642RX/)

------
swayvil
Deck 82 key. Glowing yellow symbols on black keys. Smooth action. Built like a
tank. It's perfect.

[http://www.deckkeyboards.com/product_info.php?products_id=30](http://www.deckkeyboards.com/product_info.php?products_id=30)

------
Terretta
Goldtouch two axis adjustable ergo keyboard for Mac (and PC):

[http://www.goldtouch.com/p-2-goldtouch-v2-adjustable-
comfort...](http://www.goldtouch.com/p-2-goldtouch-v2-adjustable-comfort-
keyboard-pc-mac-compatible-usb.aspx)

------
mrexroad
work: Kinesis Advantage home: IBM Model M (from my first computer)

the kinesis advantage has been a huge improvement for my wrists and elbows.
the large space between where my hands are positioned has probably been the
greatest factor.

------
rfnslyr
This keyboard is extremely good. I've been using it for years and I've never
gone back to anything other than this.

[http://www.logitech.com/en-us/support/illuminated-
keyboard?o...](http://www.logitech.com/en-us/support/illuminated-
keyboard?osid=1&bit=32)

