You’ll have to pry my 70% and 75% keyboards from my cold dead hands. Smaller keyboards are much more ergonomic if you need to also regularly use the mouse.
Calling a 96% a mental disorder says more about you, OP than a friggin keyboard.
TKL for the win
I love this memes, but I feel like including TKL in the circle would be a little more fitting. I know I’m a little biased for being a TKL user, but they really aren’t that esoteric. Every key is where you expect it. It just doesn’t have a numpad.
Imagine the market being saturated with all kinds of keyboards in various form factors and layouts and someone holding you accountable for what you’re using.
I used to think I can’t do without an F-row. Nowadays I use a bunch of 60-ish boards (a Boardwalk, a Lily58, an Elora) and it’s all fine. Even back when I was using a 75%, I was used to have e.g. the arrows on IJKL on a layer (of course it doesn’t work well for games, but for things like text editing I’d argue it’s even better than dedicated keys). In general I’d suggest to everyone to challenge themselves a little bit with things that don’t seem good at first but might end up being useful in the long run.
Just for the few games that either have so many controls (eg. GTA V) or so many actions (eg. modded MC), ≥ 100% is mandatory for me.
What is a greater than 100% keyboard?
Full size gets in the way for no good reason. TKL is the best. The others force you to do too much weird shit just to get common keys.
I’m kind of intrigued by this one… What’s it called??
That’s the DataHand, one of the few novel text-entry devices in the last few decades. It’s sadly no longer made but ifyou want a modern one, check out the Svalboard.
The Svalboard is made by one guy in California with FOSS firmware based on QMK/Vial. He took it on because his DataHand, which had enabled him to keep working with a wrist injury, broke and no parts were available.
I got one myself after near disabling wrist RSI. I don’t type as fast as I used to (yet) but I am able to work with a lot less pain.
Thanks for that. It’s nice to see an assembled option. The lalboard looked a bit intimidating. I’ve been starting to develop daily wrist pain after working for a few hours and I’m looking for a decent option that lets me keep going without ending up crippled.
DataHand, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand
Thanks! I’m gonna go check that out.
If you want a modern one, check out the Svalboard.
I’m surprised by the love here for the number pad! I saw mainly benefits for getting a 60 or 65% when I was considering a keyboard kit:
- More space for moving my mouse to the left. I play FPS games with a pretty low sensitivity, and I used to flick my thumb into my keyboard.
- More portable. My keyboard can connect with Bluetooth or usb-c so it’s nice to be able to use with a tablet
- Less switches to lube and install when I assembled it
- No redundant keys, though I had to learn traditionally typing numbers. But now I don’t have to move my hand position to type them.
I do prefer vim for text editing, so I have less use for some of the special keys. But they’re still nice to have for shortcuts or keybinds.
I have a full-sized and a 96%. I don’t know how people live without a numpad. Even my laptop has a numpad. I don’t do excel shit. But at work I have to enter alot of phone and CC numbers. At home I use the numpad for rating photos when sorting and importing them.
I don’t know how people live without a numpad
Simple, they don’t need to do all those specific things you use yours for!
Yeah 96% is great for me. I work in commercial credit analysis and I’m constantly typing numbers (account numbers/financial information/etc) so not having a number pad would suck. I work from home like 75% of the time and my work space is shared with my personal computing space. I have 1 keyboard that’s Bluetooth so I can swap between my personal desktop, personal laptop, and my work laptop. Same with my mouse. Sometimes I do think about getting a smaller keyboard and adding a separate numpad that can tuck out of the way when I’m not working as I don’t use it much for personal computing.
I use the number pad for various keybinds in games where there are too many things to control with the keys I regularly use.
Are you Grubby? No actual human uses number pad for keybinds in games, only game Gods who learned before there were real alternatives.
The numpad is still a popular option in roguelikes. It’s also worth noting that sometimes the ortholinear layout of numpad keys is more appropriate than the staggered layout of letter keys.
real af ngl
While I love my full-sized keyboard, respectfully - who cares. The whole idea of a PC is the freedom to use whatever you want.
Keyboards, controllers, speech to text, a wii-mote, literal bananas/bread, eye/blink trackers, whatever suits you best. Insisting there’s a best device for everyone doesn’t change people’s minds and just leads to hostility when we should be glad more people are using the device that makes them happy. One day you might be one of them when your circumstances or preferences change.
Full-size is objectively superior, everything else is a mitigation for sub-optimal circumstances.
If you have reduced desk space and need to conserve your keyboard size to allow more room for a mouse then absolutely, pick as small a keyboard as you’re comfortable with to get sufficient mousing space.
Anything beyond that is subjective personal preference, which again I have no qualms with, but calling it better without further qualification is going to invite incredulity.
If a full-sized keyboard provides all the keys you reasonably need to do your tasks efficiently, then yes a full-sized keyboard is superior. But that is just not the use case for everyone, hence why it can’t be objectively so. Unless you want to imply that more keys even if you don’t need them is better anyways.
If so, you could argue this monstrosity of a keyboard (or something even bigger) is what everyone should be using if they have the space, since it has way more buttons than a full-sized keyboard, making it even more objectively superior. In reality you would not use more than 30% of the buttons on that keyboard, so the rest might as well not exist. But if you are, I don’t know, some macro-wizard playing 4 instances of WoW at the same time, maybe it is objectively superior for your needs, but for me a normal sized keyboard would do.
But to try and sense where you’re coming from, it should also be said that someone telling you their choice is better and disregarding that your criteria aren’t the same as theirs is being silly as well. And sometimes they can be stubborn and agitated about that as well - exactly the kind of hostility I meant in my initial comment. But someone’s got to step up and swallow their pride and accept it really is just all subjective at the end of the day.
My biggest problem with that “monstrosity” is that it’s ortholinear.
You imply that such a thing being “optimal” is absurd, but if you had infinite usable desk space then what, exactly, would be the argument against it? If space is not a consideration then what does it matter if you don’t use every key?
Lots of people like smaller keyboards, and that’s perfectly fine. I get it as an aesthetic choice, and for many people it may not impact their daily use at all. But you will not convince me that removing the option of having additional keys for binding is a non-zero cost, even if they’re not currently being used.
For what it’s worth, I never used anything like that monstrosity, but I was quite happy with my G15 for the time that I had it which had 18 additional keys, plus media control, over a typical full size.
but if you had infinite usable desk space then what, exactly, would be the argument against it?
So I guess we agree then. Circumstances make something more or less optimal, meaning they are not objectively more optimal in every situation. That was my entire point, nothing more.
the main advantage of full sized keebs iirc is that some programs have key combos involving F keys or home/end and don’t support changing the mapping (Minecraft shakes fist at sky F3+g)
That’s true, and if that’s the case then that definitely changes the choice. Although, afaik these smaller keyboards often come with software to remap keys or add macro’s at the driver level. (And for this choice specifically, 75% keyboard and higher do seem to mostly have both F keys and home/end). But yeah, some people’s use consist of just writing emails and streaming video, in which case they won’t care about any of that.
No one has discussed split keyboards, which offer all the benefits of a full size and addresses ergonomic concerns across the board. Need only half your keyboard today? Done and done.
Need ALL the keyboard, we gotchu.
This is objectively superior, as it saves you from RSI.
peep the horror
Those are rookie numbers :-D
This is heaven
Ah yes, the klingon keyboard. Goes on the armrests of the captains chair.
Every time I see these kinds of split keyboards, it reminds me of this scene from Cowboy Bebop.
Nice Mizu
I love my Moonlander. I’ll never go back.
I tried but then I was bad on all the other keyboards.
I found exactly one keyboard with oversized keys for my fat sausage fingers, no num pad. I emailed the company to see if they were planning on doing a full sized version, nope. Guess I’m gonna keep making typos.
