Spacing is heavily underrated in current laptop keyboard design. Consider another part of the keyboard: the function key row. On traditional keyboards, it was grouped with gaps between the groups: Esc, F1–F4, F5–F8, F9–F12. (Laptop keyboards will commonly have an extra key or two at the right end, such as Delete and Insert, which historically were part of other clusters.) This grouping is excellent for spatial memory, whether visual or blind. If anything, it’s more valuable than it used to be, with the other functionality of the keys (e.g. brightness and volume adjustments). But somewhere along the way, this gap has been removed from most laptops, in favour of an unproductive uniformity.
(I have an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15, 2021 model, GA503QM. It has a larger-than-necessary gap between Esc and F1, slightly-smaller-than-ideal gaps between F4 and F5 and F8 and F9, and sadly no gap between F12 and Delete. It also has another row of four keys higher still: XF86AudioRaiseVolume, XF86AudioLowerVolume, XF86AudioMicMute and XF86Launch1. Kinda funny how XF86AudioMute is relegated to Fn+F1. I’m really not looking forward to whenever I switch to a laptop without a dedicated mic mute button, it’s wonderful. I honestly wish they’d added another couple of buttons on this top row.)
(I have an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15, 2021 model, GA503QM. It has a larger-than-necessary gap between Esc and F1, slightly-smaller-than-ideal gaps between F4 and F5 and F8 and F9, and sadly no gap between F12 and Delete. It also has another row of four keys higher still: XF86AudioRaiseVolume, XF86AudioLowerVolume, XF86AudioMicMute and XF86Launch1. Kinda funny how XF86AudioMute is relegated to Fn+F1. I’m really not looking forward to whenever I switch to a laptop without a dedicated mic mute button, it’s wonderful. I honestly wish they’d added another couple of buttons on this top row.)