For anyone who’s tried both: are big keyboards with lots of modifiers or little keyboards with “layers” more comfortable and functional for you? I currently have a full-size mechanical PC keyboard and am debating buying a Planck.
For what it's worth, I use an Ultimate Hacking Keyboard (UHK, https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com) and I really, really like it (have been using it for about 6 months now). I do not like the "ortho" keyboards, and I definitely need my keyboard to be split in the middle.
What I love about the UHK is the programmability: I can make the keyboard do lots of things, which makes switching between OSs much easier. The UHK makes heavy use of the "layer" concept.
I have a Planck and I'm trying to love it but it feels cramped and I find it hard to switch between it and the laptop (Thinkpad) keyboard. It's easy to program the layout so right now I'm considering moving the control keys to the center columns so my wrists can move apart, but then it will be even harder to get used to. Theoretically the ortho/columnar layout makes sense, but practically I don't feel the benefits and it throws me off completely, esp. the letters x & c (which I've learned to touch-type correctly on the standard keyboard).
One of supposed benefits of planck is reduced wrist pain. But I feel the opposite after years of using just the laptop keyboard. Because with a standalone keyboard I now use a mouse, I need to move my right hand a lot to reach it, whereas before I would just tilt it a bit to reach the touchpad. But also, because it is a mech keyboard, it's taller then the laptop, so my wrists are at an angle. I guess I need to learn how to keep my wrists above, floating in the air.
I have an ergodox and it has too many keys. The number row is hard to reach. The bottom extra row I basically never use. There are too many thumb keys. I end up using the keys under v and m as raise/lower keys and putting all the symbols (and some macros) on home row while the opposite hand's modifier is held (so ( is that key below v held with your thumb, and j).
Having extra keys for your pointer finger sounds good (those 1.5U side keys on the ergodox next to tgb and nhy), but it is actually difficult to precisely decide among 3 columns that you have to absolutely position your finger to hit. I feel like my accuracy in deciding between b or v suffers and having another possibility doesn't help.
So my suggestion is to go small. Not having a number row may be overkill; they are far away but I have yet to remap them. Figuring out what keys are most important to press and making them easy is crucial. I know I hated where {}, -, =, etc. were on traditional keyboards, so I was careful to put those on home row. It was worth it. Having an extra row of normal-sized keys instead of control, meta, super, space... probably not worth it. The 1u keys next to the 2u thumb keys on the ergodox... I basically never use them (they're arrow keys and page up/page down, but I navigate with emacs style keybindings so only use them for skipping through YouTube videos and things like that; nice to have, but impossible to use during normal typing).
Not using your pinky for enter and backspace is also great.
Yeah. I picked the Ergodox because it's basically an off-the-shelf part these days. Order one today, you'll have it on Tuesday. The same is not true of most other keyboards like that.
It's interesting, I use a kinesis advantage which has a pretty much identical layout and I use the bottom row of keys and thumb 1u thumb cluster keys regularly. In fact I now vastly prefer the fact that the arrow keys are so close to the home row.
That said - the kinesis is curved which probably makes it a lot easier to get your fingers to things?
I'll pass. I use a lot of custom QMK features, like the ability to position the two halves wherever I want, and don't like Cherry Blue and Brown keyswitches. (I'm using a combination of Novelkeys Box Royal and Hako Royal Clears to weight the pinky keys slightly less, much like the Topre Realforce boards I used before switching to an Ergodox.)
It is not perfect, of course, but ultimately I don't really care about the well. The keyboard being flat is not what made typing uncomfortable for me; your mileage may vary. I would switch back to Topre switches instantly, though. I like the way they feel. Someday I will figure out how to stick the mechanism into a Cherry keyswitch form factor.
As far as orthos go I went from Kinesis Advantage to Planck to JJ50 to 75Keys/XD75. I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts and the Planck didn't have enough keys for me. I think I could've made the JJ50 work but the extra keys on the 75Keys/XD75 are really nice to have. Typically people put them in the center and it's almost like having a split keyboard.
If you use a lot of keyboard shortcuts I would suggest starting big and working your way down.
I'm using a Vortex Pok3r which uses layers and I love it.
[Context] I was using AutoHotkey for some years before this to rewrite my keyboard. My main goal was to get rid of moving my hand to the arrow keys and back when programming to be more efficient, and have a fast way of moving around in text. Like Ctrl+arrows for jumping words, using Shift for chars/words/lines for quick selection, etc. For anyone not into this, the problem with the AutoHotkey solution is "keyboard shadowing": most keyboards don't use dedicated wires to each key but a matrix of wires instead, so, if you press 2 given keys, the system won't be able to tell if you pressed a given 3rd key or not. Also, different keyboards use different wires, so you can't use the same configuration on every keyboard.
I do miss a normal keyboard when I'm on the phone and want to use the arrows with one hand. Newer Vortex models do include dedicated keys so I might experiment with them. Also, I'm so much more efficient this way that I basically carry it with me everywhere and it's quite heavy. (I have 2: 1 at office, 1 at home.) The programmability of the thing is quite limited but still a huge win for me.
The build quality if the Pok3r is outstanding. I can't recommend it enough. I'm not affiliated.
I haven’t tried both. Nor am I a keyboard hardware enthusiast. I have just spent some time modifying my keyboard through software (Linux X Server).
I don’t get the apparent fascination that (mech) keyboard enthusiasts have with small keyboards. I can understand moving or removing the keypad since it displaces the mouse (then again, “don’t use the mouse!”), but beyond that I don’t see the appeal except for the aesthetics.
I think the happy hacking keyboard has the missing keys on the FN layer. Hopefully the FN key is programmable, or else you are stuck with whatever the manufacturer wants the FN key to mean. (Pet peeve of mine: cheap keyboards now seem to come with those dang FN keys which can’t be reprogrammed like the regular keys and are just for garbage multimedia functionality.) With a regular boring full-sized keyboard I can program/re-purpose whatever the key is on the equivalent position to the FN key, or choose another key entirely. Right now I can access all F1–F36 keys by using a series of modifier keys right in reach of the glorious Home Row (prostrates). That’s just by modifying my standard keyboard in X. And of course I can access F1–F12 without using modifier keys since I have an (almost) full-sized keyboard. That way I get the best of both worlds: I can use modifier keys to access every key from near the home row, or just one-key while using a fidget spinner with the free hand.
With most mechanical keyboards I’ve encountered the FN key is fully programmable, along with every other key on the keyboard. Typically rather than having the functionality hard coded the FN key will activate a second layer, it’s similar to how shift activated a layer of uppercase characters, but with different functionality.
On mine I have a key that flips into a symbols layer, placing characters commonly used in programming either on or close to the home row, and flips hjkl into vim style cursor keys. I’ve also got another layer on a different key which disables almost all my customisations and turns it into a standard qwerty keyboard for gaming.
If you’re deep into layout customisations via X I suspect you’d really like a decent mechanical with customisable firmware, and probably a few spare keys for mapping to layer shifts.
Xkb gives me eight different layers just on the shift keys (not the control keys etc.). Just takes a ton of time to learn because Xkb is borderline arcane (:)) and because you have to do everything manually if you want something beyond “swap control and Caps Lock”.
If time is money I wouldn’t be surprised if I could have saved a lot of money by just buying a mechanical keyboard with good on-board firmware and programming. At least I have a hard time imagining that the programming would be harder than on X.
it's a tradeoff between more keypresses vs. more finger/arm movement; also the topic is pretty contentious and nobody will give you an unbiased answer. My biased opinion is that layer-based boards without thumb keys are horrible, something like the Atreus is exclusively better than the Planck.
The Planck was designed to be small, not ergonomic. The popularity of the layout is (imho) due to good market timing, low cost, competent business operation, and good electronics design work.
