Wanting to move from conventional to ergo mech. Am overwhelmed. Send help. - eviltoast

I’m a complete novice to mech and ergo so I apologize in advance for any sins lol

The 3 I checked are Kinesis 360 (https://kinesis-ergo.com/keyboards/advantage360/), Glove80 (https://www.moergo.com/collections/glove80-keyboards) and the Moonlander (https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/).

These below are what I got from watching reviews:

  • Kinesis is difficult to customize and sometimes has connectivity issues
  • Glove80 feels cheap
  • Moonlander doesn’t have many keys and thumb cluster is on odd position

Considering the prices, the moonlander is about US$100 cheaper than the others, so feels like a better option.

I am interested in options with keywell, as they feel way more comfortable, but anything will be better since I use an conventional non-split keyboard.

The right menu links to a compare tool but there are so many.

My hands are small, so it may constrain the options I have. Or maybe not.

What are your opinions/suggestions/experience with these types of keyboards?

  • mmasnick@lemmy.one
    0·
    1 year ago

    I have a Moonlander and find it works well for me. Took a little while to get used to, but really not long, and the longer I used it, the more I liked it. Not sure what you mean that it doesn’t have many keys, as it has way more than a lot of ergo keyboards?

    • lfzs@lemmy.caOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      It has more than the ergo I saw too. I’m used to number row and function keys and wouldn’t want to lose that. That would probably take some getting used to it but if I can still have those keys, no reason to choose one that doesn’t.

      • mmasnick@lemmy.one
        0·
        1 year ago

        I know of almost no ergo boards that have dedicated function keys. Moonlander does have number keys though… and you can use layers to turn those into function keys…

        • lfzs@lemmy.caOP
          0·
          1 year ago

          I saw some mentions of layers but in all fairness, it’s not appealing to me if I want to hit F6 to make the cursor go to the browser’s address bar.

          But thanks for mentioning! It may help others.

          • mmasnick@lemmy.one
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, I get it. I say the same thing about boards with no number keys and people tell me I can just use layers. But for whatever reason, layers for function keys makes more sense to me. It’s just like pressing “shift” except instead of “shift” you press a different button and the number/function key.