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Discussion on: A 60% keyboard is good for you

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turowski profile image
Kacper Turowski

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 😉

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ilaif profile image
Ilai Fallach

@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 😂

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turowski profile image
Kacper Turowski

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.

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eelstork profile image
Tea

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.