A keyboard is a very personal device. What works for you might not work for me, and vice versa. Your anatomy and current habits will have a huge impact on which keyboard is best for you.
I want to share my perspectives on this keyboard with you so that you can be better-informed about what might or might not work for you.
#Relevant info about me
- I’ve been using the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard as my main keyboard ever since I started my career 9 years ago. I had multiple copies of it.
- I can touch-type on a split keyboard layout and a regular MacBook keyboard.
- I have tiny hands. I have to buy cleaning gloves in size XS, and I can barely spread my fingers to play an octave on the piano.
- I have problems with hand and arm pain on my right side only, which is most likely caused by my mouse usage.
- On a standard Mac keyboard, I always swap Option and Command so that it’s easier to type Polish letters (letter + Option with the thumb of the same hand).
- Sometimes I need to work from my laptop without an external keyboard (when traveling).
- I like having the option to customize my tools if I really need to, but I don’t enjoy this process. I prefer it when my tools have reasonable default settings.
#Why did I buy the Kinesis Advantage 360?
Microsoft has stopped producing my favorite keyboard. It was time to choose a new product.
I wanted to get “the most ergonomic” keyboard possible as a preventive measure. I already have hand pain caused by my mouse usage. I expect to develop more problems from keyboard usage in the future.
Kinesis Advantage 360 had great reviews online. The fully split keyboard layout with thumb clusters, the key well, and the orthogonal keys all seem like great ergonomic features. This keyboard has a lot of fans (yes, I do watch ThePrimeagen) and it seemed like a great product overall.
It turned out not to be a great product for me.
#Why it didn’t work for me
Getting used to this keyboard was a challenge. I did a lot of typing practice during the first month. I managed to get pretty good at typing English sentences, but I never got used to typing and navigating code. I tried a few different layout tweaks. Ultimately, I have given up on it after 2 months.
#Forced customization
This keyboard wants you to customize it. It has great software for remapping keys and offers multiple custom layers and macros.
I had to remap a few keys to get it more compatible with my current muscle memory, but I wasn’t sure exactly where to put each key. I spend hours researching other people’s layouts. I had to make guesses about what would make sense for me. I had to consider all the keyboard shortcuts that I normally use. Every attempt at changing the layout would be costly. It takes weeks to develop new muscle memory, so it felt very important to get it right on the first try.
But I do not know anything about designing keyboard layouts, and I did not enjoy this process at all. I don’t want to be a keyboard designer, just a user.
#Key shape
The keys on this keyboard are very tall compared to laptop keyboards or my previous external keyboards. It turned out to be a problem for both of my pinkies. Pressing the keys with a pinky felt difficult, but it was the aiming that bothered me the most. Somehow, I could not learn how to find the right key with my pinky.
I was also annoyed by the lack of bumps on the home row keys F & J. It’s my understanding that the home row has a unique shape and maybe even a slightly different texture. For me, that was not enough to be able to confidently find my way back to the home row. I would very often place my hands one key off horizontally, e.g. hold my index finger over “K” instead of “J”.
#Destroyed productivity on a normal keyboard
Whenever I would try to type on my laptop keyboard, I would suck at it.
The orthogonal keys on the Advantage 360 made it hard to type correctly on the top and bottom rows of a staggered laptop keyboard. I would often be off by half a key when using my laptop keyboard.
The thumb clusters introduced a completely different type of muscle memory for pressing Backspace and all modifier keys (Option, Command, Control in different places), which meant I had to think twice about every keyboard shortcut before attempting to press it on a regular keyboard layout.
And then there were the arrows…
#Destroyed productivity in navigating code
My single biggest annoyance with this keyboard layout is the arrows. On the default layout, the arrows were on the second bottom row - Left and Right arrows for the left hand, Up and Down arrows on the right hand. This did not work for me at all. I need to select text with precision all the time. I need to hold Shift and Option or Command, and then navigate using any of the four arrows to select multiple lines of code, not always starting at the beginning of the line. This felt extremely awkward with the default layout.
I tried an alternative layout. I put all arrows on the second bottom row for my right hand. In this order: Left, Up, Down, Right. This did not work well either. I did not manage to get fully used to it, my brain still expected the Up arrow to be one row above the other arrows. There is a chance that I would have used to it at some point, but my need to use the laptop keyboard sometimes would get in the way.
There was no way to recreate the classic arrow layout (Left, Down, Right on one row, Up above Down) without using a second layer. And I did not want to start using a second layer. I would either need to toggle that on and off every time I needed the arrow keys, which is a lot. Or I would need to hold another modifier key to turn off the layer, which would conflict with my need to already be holding two other modifier keys to do text selection.
Alternatively, I could have considered coming up with a custom keyboard shortcut for selecting and navigating text. Maybe macros? But as I already said, I did not enjoy the customization process at all.
#More mouse usage
All the above problems (struggling to find the right layout, the arrows, the thumb clusters) had one very predictable outcome: I started using my mouse way more. I stopped feeling comfortable using my usual keyboard shortcuts because my old muscle memory didn’t work anymore, and the new movements for the same shortcuts felt awkward. I felt like my new keyboard wasn’t really designed for all the shortcuts that I have been using previously (defined by MacOS and WebStorm mostly). I felt like it’s just easier to use the mouse “just this once” for actions that I previously did exclusively with keyboard shortcuts. “I’ll get more fluent on the keyboard soon”, I told myself.
I decided to give up on this keyboard when I realized that I started switching to the mouse to select text and click “copy” on it. Something that I haven’t used the mouse for in decades.
#What I will be using instead
Trying out the Kinesis Advantage 360 convinced me that Kinesis is a great keyboard manufacturer, even if their top product doesn’t fit my needs. The quality of the hardware is great, and the customization options are impressive.
I decided to give Kinesis another try and bought their Microsoft Sculpt clone - the Kinesis mWave.
And I love it!
It’s almost exactly like Microsoft Sculpt, but better:
- You can switch between a wired or a wireless connection.
- It can be backlit when wired.
- Custom layouts are saved onto the keyboard, so you remap it once, even if you use it with different computers (I swap computers multiple times a day).
- The Up arrow has a bump.
