The Ergodox Keyboard

Up to "Keyboards"

A friend of mine ordered an Ergodox keyboard from Massdrop. The Ergodox keyboard is a lot like the Kinesis, but flat and in two halves (see images below). It's also fully open source, both hardware and software. Massdrop allows multiple people to order one each, and it accumulates the orders until there are enough to take advantage of a reasonable bulk discount. Then the parts are shipped to the purchasers ... who have to assemble their own keyboards. Lovely idea, but I'm very unimpressed by Massdrop's requirement that you have to create an account to see anything on the site - you can't even see the price, never mind the status of the current order or download keyboard layouts. This latter is an issue for me as my friend has loaned me the keyboard for review.

The Good

• keys are in vertical columns
• middle finger keys are slightly further away from the ball of the hand than the shorter finger keys
• keyboard in two halves means you can position the parts anywhere - awesome
• massively reprogrammable keyboard with multiple layers means you can have any key anywhere, and multiple layouts (I wasn't in a position to test this, but I can see myself using it a fair bit)
• nice looking, conversation piece
• your choice of key switch (this one has Cherry Blue, my favourite)

The Bad

• unlabelled keycaps (not a critical detail, but I prefer them labelled)
• no bump on index finger keys
• current keymap is a mess (and I can't rewrite it because it's not my keyboard) ... I couldn't find the question mark at all
• under Linux it sometimes caches keys and puts nothing on screen for ten seconds ... then plays all the keys out
• no number pad, no cursor inverted T (not a big deal for me)
• no row of keys for F-keys (you can assign them to another layer easily, but that means hitting a modifier key)
• this one has no rubber feet, just metal nut ends: bad for table surfaces and for traction
• expensive (~$250 Canadian)
• requires assembly - this one came with surface-mount diodes, which are hell to solder (although it also had holes on the board for through-hole diodes and it would be cheap to buy your own)

Am I going to get one? Probably not. I love the separately placeable halves, and the extensive key-mapping is nice. In all other respects I prefer the Kinesis layout (although it took a VERY long time to get used to). The price is high, I'd have to assemble it (not difficult, but I don't need the grief), and there's the unanswered question of why it holds typed keys for up to ten seconds and then writes them all out: not a good thing. It may be a weird interaction between Linux's USB layer and the Teensy microcontroller, but until I know I wouldn't want to invest the money.