Conventional Keyboards Are STAGGERINGLY STUPID!

Ben Vallack · 209.5K views · 2020-05-30 · 6:39

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Overview

Ben Vallack compares finger movement on a staggered keyboard with an ortholinear grid keyboard, using an Anne Pro 2 and a ZSA Planck EZ. He argues the stagger forces awkward finger motion.

On Hacker News

HN links it in keyboard threads as a short visual demonstration of why staggered layouts force unnatural finger movement.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2021–2022

Topics

Consumer devices & gadgets Product & industrial design

What people said

Fetiorin · 2022-08 · Recommendation
Note that on normal keyboard all alpha keys are staggered to the left. For both hands. So, this stagger is not helping you to keep your left hand at correct angle. "Grid" ortholinear is not an ultimate solution either, but it is more comfy (from personal experience). There is a short video about ortho vs stagger [VIDEO]
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h3mb3 · 2021-11 · Recommendation
Where are all the 75% ortholinear split keyboards? All the super-duper ergo boards have very few keys and/or a strange layout (like this Djinn). Currently the best keyboard for my left forearm's RSI has been Mistel Barocco MD770 [1] but I've recently been aware how the staggering maybe forces the fingers to travel in slightly unnatural ways. These videos [2][3] from Ben Vallack demonstrate this nicely. Thus, I'd like to test an ortholinear one, but with all the normal 75%/tenkeyless board keys in place. I personally don't need to optimize the right hand keys as much so I'm not interested in learning an oherwise crazy new layout just to test out if the ortholinearity helps. And, I really like having the split since keeping two halves of the board further apart helps keeping my posture in control. But this combo seems to be difficult to find. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO] [3] [LINK]
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devenvdev · 2021-02 · Criticism
This is simply not true. [VIDEO] With ortholinear this argument holds more without actually twisting your wrists.
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Sources

Video by Ben Vallack, played through YouTube.

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