Looking for some testimonials on these setups as I’m due for a keyboard upgrade. I like the thought of spreading my arms a bit more and the external wrist rotation from the tenting. Any suggestions?
I was the IT Director for a company that had a lot of data entry people. I had noticed that the keyboards that they were using were mostly plain jane, mismatched, membrane keyboards. After a bit of back and forth with purchasing I convinced the company to purchase a ton of mechanical (cherry reds), split ergonomic keyboards.
Within a month RSI reports were down by 95% and after 2 months were essentially nonexistent. I also noticed that people had stopped wearing wrist braces as well. I paired this with good, well shaped mice that would hopefully lead to less fatigue with repetitive motion.
My sample size is tiny, but there are 30 some odd people who if asked, would back me up on this. So while not thoroughly scientifically proven, I am willing to say that ergonomic keyboards do make a big difference. I think mechanical makes a pretty big difference too. Cherry reds activate with very little pressure and, imo, make typing long documents or notes much less annoying/stressful/painful/
They take a fair amount of getting used to, especially if you get an ortholinear variety. You might find yourself not really enjoying it out the gate, but it’ll force you into better typing posture and you’ll grow to love it over time and hate the times you have to type on a standard keyboard. I have an Ergodox and the ortholinear aspect took a while to get used to and settling into a function keys layout I liked took another good while. Expect to be worse at typing and less productive at the outset. Your hands and wrists will thank you in the long run, though.
I got my piantor yesterday and i really like it so far, it was a bit of a challenge to set everything up in a way i like. And my writing speed has deceased from 140 wpm to about 30. But that is just a matter of relearning to write on this keyboard and unlearning years of bad writing practices.
While I do not use tenting or physically split keyboards, I have been using ergonomic split keyboards for ~16 years. Not sure if that exactly fits the category you are looking at.
The specific keyboards have been the Microsoft natural ergonomic keyboard 4000, Microsoft Sculpt, and Logitech ERGO K860. I’ve been gaming on the PC since the early 90s and have been in IT and software development for ~26 years.
I have had no issues with carpal tunnel or RSI. While I obviously cannot say it was 100% due to the split keyboard design I believe it has likely helped to keep those issues at bay. Once you are used to a split keyboard design you can feel the pitch and stress on your wrists when using a standard keyboard. I have also always used the riser that rises the wrist end of the keyboard so you fingers are sort of “falling” down toward the keys.
I used that Microsoft 4000 keyboard for years, cleaned out the membrane on it 2 or 3 times before I had to replace the entire keyboard. Then was left hunting for something to replace it; I tried a lot of keyboards. In the end I’ve settled on the Logitech K860.
I have a pretty similar bio except I’m not into gaming. I will say the feeling of going to a non-split keyboard is immediate now. I’m at a phase in my career where I’m in meetings all day so I don’t mind it was much when it happens but a few years ago I’d be having wrist pain after a couple of hours of working on a standard keyboard.
I tried the sculpt as well but found it was having issues with key repeat or just losing connectivity so I went back to a wired keyboard (MS Natural).
Any thoughts on why the Logitech is better or were you just ready for a change?
I had the exact same issue with the Microsoft Sculpt, it would disconnect much too often. There is a setting in Windows that sort of helped it but not fully. I also missed the standard cursor keys placement (home/end/pg) and the number pad as I will often punch in some numbers or even hit the enter key over there just to mix it up a bit.
The Logitech is a full width/key keyboard so cursor manipulation muscle memory is great, that was something I was still getting used to on the Sculpt. The Logitech does not disconnect as much as the Sculpt and there are no repeat key presses, it does however still disconnect at times and it is most obvious when trying to copy or paste. Overall the Logitech is the board I like best since the natural 4000.
If there was pie in the sky I’d like a full key, ergonomic split, wired, and hot swap keys so I can just fix any key that has an issue in the future. I searched high and low for that combination and haven’t found one that checks all the boxes. There are split mechanical keyboards but they are always missing a feature like: not hot swap, short the cursor keys, have shuffled the cursor keys, or dropped the number pad. There is one mechanical keyboard that comes extremely close but the keys are not hot swap.
