Plastik posted:

Great news

Kestral posted:

Does switch choice matter in terms of dealing with repetitive stress injuries? If so, what matters? Activation force, peak force, linear vs tactile, other factors?

For context, my faithful Topre Type Heaven ZA0100 is giving up the ghost, and whatever I replace it with needs to be something that's easy on my hosed-up wrists. I have a heavy keystroke that I've never been able to rid myself of despite years of trying, and it occurs to me that a heavy keystroke may not play nicely with Topre's weird switches and RSIs. The boards on Deskthority's ergonomics page seem to use a lot of Brown, but are also kinda all over the place.

I'd love recommendations in general for replacing a Topre Type Heaven, too, as I love its quiet sound, smooth feel, and total lack of LEDs. I do a great deal of typing, and my gaming is mostly slow-paced strategy/simulation stuff. If I can get a prebuilt solution that's ideal, but if the best option is assembling it myself, I can manage that.

Buck Turgidson posted:

I don't know how much of a difference the switches make. If I had to guess I'd say not much. For me the main thing that prevents pain is being able to split the keyboard and angle the two halves, ideally tenting the halves, so that I have a neutral wrist angle. I also use home row mods so my fingers aren't stretching as much.

I have a Levinson from keeb.io and I've found it very comfortable, even though it's nowhere near the most ergonomic design around. They have a bunch of other split keyboards that seem popular. It's mostly DIY though. Other than that I know of the ergodox and the moonlander, both split boards.

equation groupie posted:

For my RSI, switches haven't made a difference at all, and I've tried several. I started with Cherry Reds, which I got so I could use them in an office. When the keyboard turned out to help me with RSI a great deal, I got one for home too, and tried Cherry Whites with it. These were my favorite, as made a wonderfully loud sand and felt gret, and were heavier activation force which prevented erroneous keystrokes. However the loudness became an issue when the pandemic hit and I was wfh full time and it sounded like I was taking conference calls next to a jackhammer. I got Kailh Box Blacks thinking they'd help with the noise but they didn't. I am now on Boba U4 silent tactiles and they are nice and quiet, mostly inaudible on conference calls, and they don't make my girlfriend flee to the kitchen whenever I start work in the morning. With those four types, anyway, I haven't noticed any difference in my RSI.

What did make a difference in my RSI was getting a split keyboard and moving all the keys I used most often out from under my pinkies, and under my thumbs. It gave me such a relief that I learned how to write React so I could show why it helped me so much. (If anyone wants to see: https://keymap.click.) But whether that particular strategy works for you will depend on what kind of RSI you have.

... I guess I do think that having mechanical switches at all, vs those awful MacBook butterfly keys probably makes a difference for me. I think I have fairly heave force when I press keys, and when I've been forced to use my work macbook's keyboard directly, typing on that is painful. But I think that, at least for me, any kind of mechanical switch is going to improve on those butterfly keyboards for RSI (and everything else, lol).

Gearman posted:

You hit the jackpot with those dark jades, they are excellent and I've held off on buying more of them entirely because they're so expensive.

For 65% in your budget, this is my recommendation well above anything else: https://divinikey.com/collections/keyboards/products/kbdfans-kbd67-lite-mechanical-keyboard-diy-kit

It's got all of the features of hobby-level boards, comes with a case, coiled cable, and rgb if that's your thing. The stock stabilizers are actually pretty good too, though I do highly recommend doing the usual lubing for them like most stabilizers.

Dimestore Merlin posted:

Have you considered an alternate layout? I switched over to Colemak years ago and it tries to focus most of the keypresses (for English, anyways) to the strongest fingers.

Dimestore Merlin posted:

Have you considered an alternate layout? I switched over to Colemak years ago and it tries to focus most of the keypresses (for English, anyways) to the strongest fingers.

Fleedar posted:

I saw an RK84 Pro with aluminum case pop up on Amazon. I couldn’t find any reviews or impressions but I figured I’d risk buying it anyway. It costs $50 more than the standard RK84, and it omits the two USB A pass-through ports and the slot on the bottom of the case to store the garbage wireless dongle when it’s not in use, so that sucks. Mine also doesn’t appear to be perfectly flat and wobbles just slightly when typing on it. I can’t tell if it’s the case itself or the rubber feet, but it’s pretty much a deal breaker for me for the price premium. The aluminum does look and feel nice though!

LionArcher posted:

I found key switches and position made a world of difference. Cherry browns over blues fixed my RSI issues I’ve found.

quote:

You want linear switches, N-key rollover, and, if you're super obsessed with minimum possible latency, wired (though good wireless keyboards are fine). Everything else is seasoning to taste.

quote:

If you're after absolute lowest latency there's also polling rate and debounce to consider. QMK-based controllers have a fairly low rate, and regular mechanical switches have a small delay for debounce.

https://wooting.io/wooting_two_he

Wooting advertise low latency as one of their features, I don't think anyone ever bothers to test these things though

quote:

RTINGS tests keyboard latency

https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/tests/latency

Kestral posted:

Interesting! What do you think was giving you trouble with the blues? Activation force, something to do with the clickiness of it, just being a tactile switch?

I just got my switch testers today, a standard Cherry assortment and three from Matias, and of those, the Cherry browns and reds both felt great, as did the Quiet Linear and Quiet Click (which doesn't actually click, it's just tactile). It's hard to make an accurate comparison though, since the Cherry tester came with keycaps, and the Matias one didn't - and its switches are incompatible with the caps from the Cherries Got to say, after a week of poking away at this project in the evenings, this is a... challenging thing to get in to as an outsider.

Is it even possible a hot-swap setup between Cherries and Matias / Alps? I think my ideal situation would be a hot swappable board that comes with browns that I can potentially switch out for Quiet Linear or Quiet Click, but I'm not certain that's even a thing you can do.

Kestral posted:

What’s the actuation force of the Boba U4 Silent 62g is like in practice? I’ve only seen the spring weight listed officially, and a single one-off comment that the actuation is “probably around 47g." Checking out the only force curve chart I could find (the 68g variant, unfortunately), it looks like you actually do need to put ~60ish grams of force into the thing to get it over the bump, not just to bottom it out, but I'm not sure I'm actually reading this diagram properly or how much faith to put in it.

After finally getting my hands on fully-built mechanical keyboards for testing purposes (Razer Yellows, NK Creams, and Cherry Blues from friends who turned out to be keyboard enthusiasts), what I’ve learned today is that I definitely need some tactility, but that anything heavier than blues are off the table, and even the blues are right at the edge of what I’d prefer: I could feel it in my wrists after even a short while typing on the creams, especially. Combing through the thread, ThereminGoat, and some youtube audio comparisons, it seemed like the U4 Silents are what I’m looking for in so many ways, but if they really do take ~60g to even actuate, that’s not going to be good for me in the long run.

I see there’s also this magnificent crazy person offering hand-lubed Boba U4s with 52g springs, which I can only imagine are also a custom job and are very tempting.

… good lord this hobby really is a black hole for money, isn’t it?

LionArcher posted:

Are you my twin? I just ordered kiwis and now boba u4t’s to try out. I’m on browns but could use just slightly heavier more tactile, but too heavy would hurt my wrists.

I was thinking GMMk Pro, but I realize just an external rotary knob switch combo and a 65% board is probably end game and just go for that and ave the money of slowly upgrading multiple boards.

So by end of day I’m going to order a ginko 65, but I can’t decide between black and green. I use XDA key caps (big fingers) and if there was a clone of pharaohs key caps I would go black. There is a clone of botanical though, so maybe I go green.

Kestral posted:

I'd love to hear how they both work out for you! Right now I'm back to the drawing board on switches: been doing a deep dive on the subject and found one decent thread on Geekhack where folks discuss RSI and light tactile switches. It seems be a, uh, difficult place to be, with options that are fairly limited and obscure. Those custom 52g U4s are looking increasingly tempting.

Unsinkabear posted:

Ignore my previous post, both low profile and ergo split are way too limiting, so I'm just going to learn to type on regular-height 75%.

From switching back and forth between my laptop and new board I've realized that I have a broke brain and really do like that little membrane pop feeling, and would like to go back to something with Topre or Topre clones. Problem is, something seems to be up with their supply chain and anything using either is costing like 50% more than it used to or is just Plum (pun intended) sold out.

Are there any mechanical switches that come even remotely close that quietly tactile hybrid feel?

Cabbages and Kings posted:

TeMpLaR posted:

I very much like the keycaps.