(The cover photo was generated using MidJourney)
A few years ago, at one of the companies I've worked for, I came across a proliferation of mechanical keyboards and in particular, 60% keyboards, and I bought one for myself.
Since then, I've used that 60% mechanical keyboard, and I can't go back. However, I've noticed that like many other practices in software development, it's easy to stay in the comfort zone of what we already know, since there are so many things to learn.
As I wrote in my introductory blog post, developers are lifelong learners. Therefore, I hope that sharing my own experience will encourage you to try something completely different. This might seem difficult at first but will improve your typing experience and productivity over time.
Let's start with the basics.
What's a mechanical keyboard?
A physical keyboard that uses an individual spring and switch for each key (PCMac)
Wait, so what isn't a mechanical keyboard?
The most widely produced keyboard type is called Membrane (although there are other types as well):
A physical keyboard whose "keys" are not separate, but rather are pressure pads that have only outlines and symbols printed on a flat, flexible surface.
Some history
Initially, when keyboards were first produced, they were mechanical. As computers began getting cheaper, manufacturers looked for ways to make keyboards cheaper as well, and thus the membrane keyboard was created.
However, membrane keyboards have downsides to mechanical keyboards, and so in recent years, users with high requirements from keyboards (Gamers, Typers, Programmers, etc..) began using them again.
Here's a comparison by wepc.com:
Back to mechanical keyboards
The most important part of a mechanical keyboard is the switch type. There are 3 types: linear, tactile and clicky:
- Linear (red, yellow, black) - are the quietest of all and the fastest to click on which makes them popular among gamers.
- Tactile (brown, orange) - have a tactile bump that is felt on each key press.
- Clicky (blue, green) - are the noisiest and produce a clicky sound when actuated.
(Source: steelseries.com)
Keycaps (the actual plastic above the switch), board type, and form (size) are also important factors of mechanical keyboards.
Let's talk about the form, then.
What's a 60% keyboard?
Keyboards have many custom forms as can be seen in the following graphic that shows some of them:
(Source and a great forms guide from keychron.com)
The full-sized is probably the "classic" keyboard, while a variation of 75% is roughly what we see on most laptops. From my personal experience, I'd say that most of us are comfortable with keyboards in the range of 75% to full-sized.
If we go down to 65%, usually the first thing that we lose is the function keys (F1, F2, ...).
But function keys are useful, and so an Fn key usually exists, that when held, will "switch" the functionality of the top row to the function keys:
-
ESC->` -
1->F1 -
2->F2 - ...
This is all still pretty sane since F keys are not very commonly used, so pressing an additional key from time to time to use the F keys is still within the "comfortable" zone.
When we go below 65%, though, things are starting to get "less comfortable" (and more interesting 😬). Perhaps the biggest change is the removal of arrow keys. These keys are so common, that it sounds insane to be able to work properly without them.
Today we're going to discuss the benefits of 60% keyboards, and why I think they are good for you :)
(My 60% keyboard)
Why is a 60% keyboard good for you?
TL;DR:
- Faster switch from using the mouse to typing
- For most people it's ergonomically better
- Faster reach to all navigational keys
- More compact
- Cheaper
(1) Keyboard and mouse
Whenever we're typing, our neutral position of both hands is on what is called the home row keys, which are A, S, D, F for the right hand, and J, K, L, ; for the left.
Assuming you're right-handed, whenever you want to use your mouse, you need to move your hand from the home row keys to the mouse, as seen in the following graphic:
As we can, when working with a full-size keyboard, the distance is quite large. With a 60% keyboard, it looks like this:
This means that with a 60% keyboard, switching between 2-hand typing and the mouse is much faster (~half the distance!).
(2) Ergonomics
While it depends on your shoulder length, the average person needs to bend his hands outwards from their neutral resting position when using a full-size keyboard. A 60% or tenkeyless keyboard is almost always more ergonomic.
The following article seems to go really deep into choosing the right keyboard form for you: Keyboard Form Factor Guide / Ctrl.blog.
(3) Use navigational keys faster
A common feature in mechanical keyboards is the key mapping programmability. We can program keys to behave differently.
A specific capability is the "temporary layer switch", which allows a held key to change the entire keyboard's key mapping temporarily (as long as it's being held).
The following visualization shows my personal temporary layer key mapping. I chose the Caps Lock key as my layer switch key, as I rarely use this functionality anyway, and it's positioned nicely on the home row.
As you can see, all the navigational and Fn keys (+bonus media keys!) are now much closer to the home row, which keeps your hands in the same place even when using the arrow keys!
Note: It takes some time to get used to a new key mapping such as this. It took me 3 weeks to reach my regular working speed, and since then it had gotten better ^^
(4) More compact
Not much to add here really, it's just smaller, and therefore allows for more desk space and is much more portable.
(5) Cheaper
Fewer keys == Fewer materials == Cheaper (Assuming all the rest of the factors of the keyboard are the same).
When used at work
We've already covered that one of the characteristics of mechanical keyboards is that they are usually louder than their membrane counterparts.
While this can be considered an advantage if you like the sound of the typing, when working alongside others, it can become a life-threatening event (A few co-workers not-so-secretly expressed the desire to murder me when I used a clicky-switch keyboard for long enough periods).
However, there are insanely quiet switches that are even quieter than membrane keyboards.
We are now going to cover my current mechanical keyboard setup that I personally like (and is also very quiet).
My 60% keyboard setup
Prebuilt keyboard
My own keyboard setup is pretty simple. I originally bought a prebuilt budget keyboard that is quite customizable.
Let's breakdown the long title description of this keyboard:
- 60% - We know this one already ;)
- RGB - Full Red-Green-Blue lighting on each of the keys, and is fully programmable with animations, etc...
- hotswap switch - This means that the board allows you to pull out existing switches and replace them with others easily.
- pbt keycaps - The type of the keycaps. This is a whole topic in and of itself, here's an overview.
- programmable - There's software that allows configuring everything from keymapping and lighting to macros.
- 61 key poker layout - The keyboard has exactly 61 keys. "Poker" stands for an unofficial name of all 60% keyboards.
- SmartMonkey iGK61 set2b - The exact model of the keyboard.
There are two customization options: the color of the keyboard and the switch model.
My first switches were the Kailh Box Whites. These switches are very clicky and while I absolutely loved the typing feeling they had (one of the best I ever tried), I needed something else for the office.
Silent Switches
After some research, I came across Gazzew's Boba U4 Silents switches.
It's magical how quiet these switches are!
I also really liked their typing feeling, and they are my current favorite switches for typing at the office.
GSA Keycaps
Next, I wanted to give some color to my keycaps. While I don't think they're the nicest looking keycaps out there, their "same-height" GSA profile (Yes, Keycaps layout is another thing you should be aware of 🙈) is really nice:
Programming the temporary layer
This keyboard has software that allows remapping the keys to enable the temporary layer as seen in the Use navigational keys faster section to improve productivity.
If you need any help with defining the mapping, then try this youtube video. Also, feel free to reach out!
That's it, folks! I hope that you've enjoyed this blog post. If you have any questions about mechanical keyboards or decided to learn more after reading this, please let me know by commenting here or reaching me directly at @ @ilai
Disclaimer: I'm a rather noob in the vast world of mechanical keyboards. There are awesome resources out there to further learn about mechanical keyboards. Youtube is a great starting point, just write "Getting started with mechanical keyboards" and get started (Just remember to open a stopwatch to stop you from a never-ending video wormhole 😉).
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Originally published at https://buildstupidstuff.com.
Top comments (68)
I strongly disagree with this.
Shorter keyboards seem to have taken the programming world by storm, but I just can't bear with it. Keyboards are supposed to make our lives easier, why ditching a handfull of keys to do so?
I personally use a TKL keyboard, an 80% one to be exact, which seems to provide a more ergonomic position for my hands. But 60% ? Like really? What is the future of this? 10-key keyboards?
I think that modern e-commerce has the power to implement "fashions" in the consumers, but let's be honest, is a smaller than 80% keyboard it REALLY worth it? Are there any productivity benefits in forcing yourself to memorize dozens of shortcuts apart from the existing ones?
Personally I believe that this "fashion" benefits only one group: the companies selling more keyboards.
Anyway, that's my two cents on the topic.
Take care
@spiropoulos94 you might be on to something here! I'm not affiliated with any keyboard manufacturer, and it's certainly a hobby as well. You can say the same about cars, or vim and remembering a ton of shortcuts.
More than fashion, I think it's about style ❤️
As someone who just went from 60% to 40%, I can confirm smaller is not cheaper. In fact the weirder it is the smaller the audience the less bulk production.
@waylonwalker - Indeed, the more the niche, the more expensive things are. Mechanical keyboards in general are more expensive, but I think that usually when a company produces multiple keyboard forms, then the 60% will be cheaper than the larger forms (less key caps, less switches, less materials in general), but it might not be true for all cases - And certainly less probable for 40% and down 😛
You can find a PCB factory to compare the quotes of these two PCB mechanical keyboards, then the answer will be obvious, for example: hilelectronic.com/😛
hi Waylon. Do you plan to write about this? I would be interested to hear your initial, 1 month, 3 months, experiences with a 40%.
I've been using a split ergo 40% for a year now. I will say that day one on a split ergo it tough, but me and the few people I have converted got over that hump aftr a few days. 40% it quite a bit harder. I'd say a month in I was "ok", but not great. It takes time to set up your config the way that works for you. In a way it's kinda like vim, were trying to change few keys at a time is good, but to get in you have to change a whole bunch all at once. numbers weren't too bad for me, it was all the symbols, brackets, parens, etc that got me, but now I know where I have everything laid out very well, I never got to this point and always was looking at a normal keeb for symbols and stuff.
Also a split ergo feels soooo comfy when you get into it, It just feels like your fingers are twisted on anything else. that said you pay the price of a few wpm. I think part of this is that there are a few overlap keys that you can no longer hit with both hands.
Thanks for this personal experience. I believe a split keeb or an Alice layout is my next experience. 40% later ☺️
Thanks. Great info. The split ergo 40%s look really nice. Tempting...
I way under estimated how hard 40% would be and how easy split ergo would be
@waylonwalker I'd like to see such a blog post as well! It might push me further down the size ❤️
Hi @vitalipom, thanks a lot for the kind words!
Although I've only wrote 3 articles so far in my personal blog post - This is the #1 reason to write: To inspire and get inspired from the amazing people in the dev.to community.
Please do share the keyboard link, it sounds interesting!
If I can be of any further help, let me know, and have a great day! ❤️
I've recently fallen into the mechanical keyboard rabbithole! Nice post, thanks for sharing. I prefer to use something like QMK or VIA for programming the keyboard layers, though.
Reading about that keyboard (the iGK61) it doesn't sound like it supports QMK or any of the open software tools for configuring the key layouts, which is a shame. If you continue along the path of checking out mechanical keyboards, I'd recommend looking for those options next time.
@andypiper thank you! It indeed does not 😞. However, I've found the software to be usable, and the price point of the iGK61 to be low enough to make it easy for beginners to get started with!
I'm only a beginner in the mechanical keebs world - So i'll sure continue along the path. Do you have any QMK keyboard to recommend? 😬
Well... it depends. I do have a smaller VIA/QMK keyboard which works OK, but I haven't been able to build replacement firmware, just edit the keyboard layout in VIA - I made a repo for it, and that one is only a 40 key option. I also have a Reviung 41 which is a different type of layout completely, it also runs QMK though. My day-to-day is currently a mechanical TKL that doesn't have software configuration.
So no, I don't have a 60 key QMK-compatible keyboard to suggest, but there are plenty out there :-)
Thanks! I didn't find it so easy to find a list of QMK recommended keyboards. I would expect to find such a list more easily. The smaller layout keeb is really cool!
I know some Blender users might have issues switching to compacts, as they use numpad pretty extensively. Before someone says "just remape the keys, duh", there's so many bindings in Blender, it pays to learn the default keybinds rather than try to work around existing ones. Most keys already have something assigned.
Which is where the dark side of this hobby comes in, haha. You can own more than one keeb, different sizes and all.
Myself, I use 75% keeb and I'm using arrows rather extensively. It's just a single extra column of keys, so not much of space. Editing keys are good to have too, Ctrl+Shift+End is complicated enough, I don't need to toss in Fn or Capslock into the mix. And the function row doesn't affect anything anyway, so switching to 60% is useless in terms of ergonomics. More of a cool factor or portability thing, which is what makes 50% really fun.
A pretty interesting keyboard size is one without editing keys. I haven't seen mechanical one like that, but my Logitech K780 is of this size. It's noticeably larger than compacts (about the size of TKL, I'd say), but it offers the best of two worlds - you can use either the numpad or the editing keys (Pgup, Insert, etc), depending on whether numlock is on or off.
With that said, I'll leave you with something to brighten up your day 😉
@turowski Thanks for the different perspective!
75% keyboards are indeed a great compromise. For some reason I had a slight feeling of "claustrophobia" when using that (all of the keys were very condensed, if that makes sense 🤔).
You killed me with the video 😂
Did you see 40% and 30% keebs? Now these are certified smol. Also, obviously key spacing is exact same on all keebs unless you get something more exotic. I like my 75% but it does feel like it's bit crowded in there 😉 I getchu
And then there's the world of the fully custom mades.
You also don't want to remap these keys in Blender cause travel from mouse to keyboard, one hazardous journey filled with imaginary beasts.
Multiple keyboards is okay but can be pretty jarring if the layout / size doesn't match.
My laptop has a 75% layout (or close to it anyways). While I am a programmer, I also play a lot of games - specifically with mods. One thing about game mods is that you end up having a lot of keybinds, and there will inevitably be some sort of conflict. Fewer keys means you have to do more work to get non-conflicting keybinds, and those keybinds will have more modifier keys (since games don't really support chording keybinds). And sometimes mods will just assume you have a numpad by default, like Place Anywhere for Fallout 4.
Thanks for sharing. Do you have further informations about temporarily switch keyboard layout and making custom keyboard layouts on linux? I would be interested to use a custom alternative layout to temporarily remap HJKL to left / bottom / up / right arrows, so I don't have to leave the home row when I can't use vim bindings but still need to navigate in some text.
Thanks!
Do you have an igk61 keyboard? If so, they unfortunately don't have a Linux compatible software. However, you can always spin up a vm of mac or windows, connect the keyboard, configure it, and go back to your beloved Linux. Lmk if that helps 🙏🏽
No, I have my laptop keyboard only
I'm sure there is software that does that in Linux, but I can't recommend of any - I never tried doing that. Do share if you get it working, though!
I noticed the wrong ergonomics years ago and I LOVE my old Microsoft SideWinder X6 Keyboard with detachable keypad, which you can magnetically connect to either side. So, at home, where I don't use the keypad that much, I have keypad on the left side. And if I do heavy number works, I can simply click it to the right side and it's business as usual.
Hey, another step would be to switch to stenotype. Even less keys, you don't need to move your hands at all, and the learning curve is out of this world! Imagine the mad props from the observers when you can type a sentence in 2 seconds.
Jokes aside, I can see how 60% keyboards might be nice for gamers who have small desks and need real estate for their mice. For productivity, however, I absolutely hate anything smaller than 100%.
Here are some points to consider:
These points are of course completely subjective and based on my experience. Everyone should use the tools that find convenient for them.
I've been rocking a Corsair K70 for almost 8 years now. Blue switches at work, and Red switches at home. I especially love the USB passthrough for Yubikey. It's a near perfect keyboard, but I'll probably look into something more craft and hipster in the near future, if I ever find a keyboard that matches my requirements. But it sure as hell won't be anything smaller than 100% 🙂
Thanks Ilai for this post, especial the temporary layer switch solution seems very useful.
My keyboard preferences is a bit of out of these scope, because I am one of the few touchbar fanatic. Because touch bar give a great flexiblity and visual feedback to my keyboard. Especial I like the language switching on touchbar because my default settings is internatianal english but time to time I also use hungarian keyboards too and current language indicator is on right end of my touch bar.
Touch pad also great on MacBook pro M1 14 ( all mac ), so I do not need to use mouse. This gesture great help, include wheel gesture, is much more nicer compare with mouse wheel.
Thanks @pengeszikra! Macs are indeed great as well, and I'm typing from one as we speak. Regarding the touchpad - Personally I feel much more in control with a mouse, not sure if that's just me. 🤔
Few years ago I use PC with mouse and seems touch pad is anoing, but Mac touchpad is whole diferent world. Even I can drawing with them much controll than mouse.
By the way in mouse I prefered the iron whell equiped, which one also have capability to give momentum to wheeling.
Yep. When you use an external screen though, it's not so comfortable to use the macbook directly. Then, a separate keyboard and mouse become more important.