I just realized I’ve had my Ergodox EZ keyboard for five years, so I’m going to do a little five year review. For those who don’t know the Ergodox is an ergonomic keyboard that is fully open-source and really customizable. It’s split into two pieces so you can position your wrists naturally, and it comes with little legs to help you set it up at the angle that is most comfortable. They have some nice software you can use to set individual keys to do whatever you want, and you can change out the key switches and the key caps if you are into that. It’s also pretty modular and easy to repair if any part of it breaks.
Overall I’m pretty happy with it. At $350 it is by far the most expensive keyboard I’ve ever bought, but as someone who is on the keyboard over 8 hours a day for work and hobbies I don’t regret it. My favorite part is definitely that I can position it the way that is comfortable to me. It has really helped with the wrist pain I was having which was really scary as a programmer in your 20s, and I change the position up every few months.
I also really like that I can customize what the keys do. It has allowed me to get some really nice shortcuts going, like having one key I can use to mute no matter what video chat software I am using, or having hjkl mapped to arrow keys that I can use to navigate in any app. I’ve also changed out the keycaps once or twice and the key switches once which was really fun. It feels like getting a whole new keyboard.
My biggest gripe is the position of the thumb keys. They are supposed to be positioned where your thumb would normally rest, and there are a lot of them because your thumb is your strongest finger and so you should theoretically be using it the most for typing. However they are a bit too far away for my small hands, and the angle is wrong. This is one problem I think ZSA solved with their newer keyboard the Moonlander. I would love to have one someday, but it hasn’t been enough of a problem for me to spend another $350. My only other gripe is that it just looks weird and clunky. I’m ok with that but some of the mechanical keyboards out there today are really beautiful and the Ergodox just isn’t.
If you were in the market today I would just pick up a Moonlander as it’s a slight improvement on the Ergodox EZ. But the Ergodox remains a do-it-all top of the line keyboard. You can buy them here: https://ergodox-ez.com/ and if you are really into it you can build one yourself: https://www.ergodox.io/
mplorentz / Matthew Lorentz
npub16zs…92l7
2024-05-08 16:16:13
Author Public Key
npub16zsllwrkrwt5emz2805vhjewj6nsjrw0ge0latyrn2jv5gxf5k0q5l92l7Published at
2024-05-08 16:16:13Event JSON
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"content": "I just realized I’ve had my Ergodox EZ keyboard for five years, so I’m going to do a little five year review. For those who don’t know the Ergodox is an ergonomic keyboard that is fully open-source and really customizable. It’s split into two pieces so you can position your wrists naturally, and it comes with little legs to help you set it up at the angle that is most comfortable. They have some nice software you can use to set individual keys to do whatever you want, and you can change out the key switches and the key caps if you are into that. It’s also pretty modular and easy to repair if any part of it breaks.\n\nOverall I’m pretty happy with it. At $350 it is by far the most expensive keyboard I’ve ever bought, but as someone who is on the keyboard over 8 hours a day for work and hobbies I don’t regret it. My favorite part is definitely that I can position it the way that is comfortable to me. It has really helped with the wrist pain I was having which was really scary as a programmer in your 20s, and I change the position up every few months.\n\nI also really like that I can customize what the keys do. It has allowed me to get some really nice shortcuts going, like having one key I can use to mute no matter what video chat software I am using, or having hjkl mapped to arrow keys that I can use to navigate in any app. I’ve also changed out the keycaps once or twice and the key switches once which was really fun. It feels like getting a whole new keyboard.\n\nMy biggest gripe is the position of the thumb keys. They are supposed to be positioned where your thumb would normally rest, and there are a lot of them because your thumb is your strongest finger and so you should theoretically be using it the most for typing. However they are a bit too far away for my small hands, and the angle is wrong. This is one problem I think ZSA solved with their newer keyboard the Moonlander. I would love to have one someday, but it hasn’t been enough of a problem for me to spend another $350. My only other gripe is that it just looks weird and clunky. I’m ok with that but some of the mechanical keyboards out there today are really beautiful and the Ergodox just isn’t. \n\nIf you were in the market today I would just pick up a Moonlander as it’s a slight improvement on the Ergodox EZ. But the Ergodox remains a do-it-all top of the line keyboard. You can buy them here: https://ergodox-ez.com/ and if you are really into it you can build one yourself: https://www.ergodox.io/",
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