Hey comrades, I’ve found myself over the past four months or so becoming a huge mechanical keyboard nerd. It’s an expensive hobby but it’s so much fun and I want to know if anybody else here has also fallen into this money black hole.
I’m currently exploring different keyboard sizes, my new 75% is about to arrive but I think my favorite so far has been my 65%. Judging from my personal experience, I’m pretty sure I’ll be a 75% guy mostly. I have no interest in trying a 60%, because I love the convenience of having arrow keys.
I used to think I needed a numpad, but nowadays I find full-size to be way too large and unwieldy. My GMK104 is gathering dust, probably soon to be sold, and my F108 Pro (the keyboard that got me hooked on this hobby) is up for sale. My goal is to make my own keyboards, and I’m probably going to start by making a DIY numpad that I can use alongside my 65% or 75%.
I’ve been exploring switches and I find that the whole thing about thocky keyboards is way overblown. I want loud clack with a sharp bottom-out, and I can’t really make up my mind as to whether I prefer tactiles or linears. I’ve tried excellent switches of both types. I might lean a bit towards tactile, but not by much really.
Although I’m okay with burning through the disposable fraction of my income on this stuff, I’m not made of money. I won’t be trying high-end switches, or any switches that are not available with affordable shipping from Aliexpress. I’m very happy with my experience so far with affordable ones, like Akko, HMX (my favorites), MMD, KTT, Outemu and Gateron.
Regarding keyboards, I don’t see myself ever buying anything that costs more than about $60 or $70. Duty fees are extremely high in my country and my currency is very undervalued right now. I’m happy with my GMK67 and GMK87, and I have a QK81 on its way right now. I found a Loop 65 for a ridiculously low price on Aliexpress recently, so I got myself one as well, but that’s as far as I’ll go with buying keyboards. From now on all my new keyboards will be homemade!
In fact, having this goal of making my own keyboards has been incredibly rewarding and motivating. I’m currently relearning how to work with electronics a decade after dropping out of engineering school, learning how to use a CNC (I have a cheap 3018 that I’m still figuring out), refining my 3D printing and modeling skills and, since I’m a woodworker, I’m thinking my DIY keyboards will have wooden cases.
I don’t really have a community or many friends with whom I can nerd out over this kind of thing. There’s an insane amount of gatekeeping in this hobby, more so than in other hobbies I’ve explored in the past, and I think that if any of my fellow Hexbears are into this stuff, I’m sure you’d be the coolest people to talk about this stuff with!
I’ve personally never understood the obsession with minimalism in keyboards. One of the cool things about a keyboard is that it can do literally anything I could possibly want it to do. There is no program that includes a function that my keyboard can’t handle.
Why would I want to chop off 30% of the keys to save like a couple inches of desk space that’s reserved for a keyboard anyway?
One of the big reasons is to reduce finger movement actually! If you go really small with multiple layers you can have all the functionality of a full size board without ever moving your fingers more than one key from their home positions.
That being said, I personally go back and forth on whether I prefer that or not. It feels more efficient but also I feel like moving my whole hands actually kind of helps with RSI more than reducing movement but locking my hands in place. Still trying different things on that front though
Same. I understand going down from full-size to something smaller, but in my personal opinion there’s not much benefit to going below 65%. I like having more desk space and I like the aesthetics of a 65/75% without that gap between the arrow keys and the nav cluster. Below that size, I think there’s diminishing returns and I don’t feel very comfortable having to make heavy use of Fn-layers in order to do basic things like navigating text, for example. The function keys are the most I’m willing to sacrifice for a more compact keyboard.
My minimalist keyboard can also do anything I could possibly want it to do, I can remap the keys on the fly in a browser window, program hotkeys and macros to make my job easier, etc. I forget how many layers it supports, more than I’d ever need for sure. Of course there are full size keyboards with that shit too, but people like me with RSI can really benefit from a compact layout that minimizes finger reach. In my case it made a huge difference.