Hello all:
I am in need of some advice. I am a consultant for a living and spend my days writing reports. When I am at home, I am using an Advantage 360 Pro which I absolutely love; when I travel to meet with clients though, I use my corporate Mac… which has less than stellar ergonomics.
The 360 is too big and bulky for me to travel with (I know some do), but I use forearm crutches and need to carry everything in a backpack. Weight and overall size are an important consideration.
I was looking at the Glove80, and the Corne-ish Zen but then I saw the new ZSA Voyager…
I also thought about something like a Skeletyl, huge fan of the Dactyls - and the work over at BastardKB; I love minimalist layouts but I also live in Canada; the 360 with exchange and duty when I ordered in on Drop cost me ~$750CDN.
I wish keyboards were more affordable but hey…
Thoughts?
You’re kinda all over the board on which keyboards you’re looking at, 36 to 80 key keyboards, some with keywells, some without, some by big companies, some open source made by solo vendors. If you’re looking for just a list of keyboards to browse through, you can checkout the wiki here and focus on vendors in your region: https://gitlab.com/ergomechkeyboards/wiki/-/wikis/useful-resources. If you’re looking for recommendations, you’ll probably need to give us more than just something to travel with.
I would say that keywells don’t make for very travel friendly boards. If you want a big company build (OEM), I think the ZSA lineup (ergodox, moonlander, voyager) are going to be the best travel boards. If you’re looking at open source boards (corne, skeletyl, etc - DIY boards, they’re called, but you can find solo vendors to do the complete build for you), then pretty much any flat board you find will be better to travel with than a skeletyl or glove80, and from there you can choose as many or as few keys as you want. For either DIY or OEM boards, I would just browse the list of vendors in the wiki link I posted above.
I appreciate the feedback and the advice. Yeah, I am a fan of all the keyboards. :) I think I might take a chance on a DIY kit in a 34 or 36 key configuration and build it myself. Can’t learn if I don’t try.