[flamwenco]

Had a friend who got one of these as a joke and he ended up loving it, which in turn sent me down the 40% keyboard rabbit hole.

However, rather than a pure ortholinear board like planck, I _highly_ recommend a columnar stagger board like the Reviung41[0] or the Corne[1]. Columnar stagger retains the benefits of ortho, but also accounts for the natural difference in finger lengths and I find it by far the most comfortable layout type. Full splits like the Corne are really good for ergonomics, but the Reviung41 is my favorite board because it has some of the advantages of a split, while retaining the advantages of a single piece board like the Planck.

I did initially buy a ZSA Moonlander, but I highly regret the purchase. The thumb cluster is incredibly poorly designed for anyone who doesn't have freakishly giant hands, and becomes even more unusable if you prefer a steeper tenting angle, since that moves it even further away from the rest of your hand. And putting the tenting at a shallower angle to make the cluster usable, kinda defeats the whole purpose of tenting the board in the first place. If you want a split like the Moonlander, I think you're better off looking at something like the Lily58[2] or the Corne, or any of the myriad number of split keyboards with sane thumb clusters.

After using a 40% board for a while, I no longer understand why people insist on bigger boards other than habit or fear of change. The smaller layout means that despite having to rely on layers to reach some keys like symbols or numbers, they're also far closer to your homerow than on a traditional board.

Switching to a 40% and a trackball was one of the best decisions I've made comfort-wise, and even resolved some hand pain issues I was having because my desk is tiny.

[0] https://github.com/gtips/reviung/tree/master/reviung41 [1] https://github.com/foostan/crkbd [2] https://github.com/kata0510/Lily58

[klysm]

I personally don’t understand why someone would want an ortho if you’re going to 1) have to learn a new layout and 2) spend a lot of money on something custom. The ergonomics of either a columnar stagger or something like a manuform seem way better.

[flamwenco]

Yeah, I think ortho has benefits over row stagger, but if you're going to go through the learning curve anyway, I think going straight to columnar stagger is more beneficial. That said, I don't find it that hard to switch between ortho and columnar stagger, so it may not be a huge deal if you learn ortho first, unless you're moving to a board with incredibly aggressive pinky stagger or something.

I think the one thing ortho has going for it over columnar stagger is aesthetics, which is a little silly in a discussion about ergonomics, but after a certain point, some smaller keyboards are kinda just there for fun. I have a small ortho 10 column board that is just adorable and I like using it, but it's definitely not as comfy or efficient as my reviung.

[nico_h]

There's also the Atreus, similar but one more row than the Reviung, on keyboard.io