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Why are there so many different keyboard sizes and layouts? Is it possible to find the perfect keyboard? Will we type better or faster with a “high-end” keyboard?
Here’s my take:
75% Keyboard Layout
Recently, my wife needed a new keyboard because, for the hundredth time, some of the keys on her Macbook started to fail. No news here about how Apple makes laptops with more than horrible keyboards. I remember when I bought my first Apple laptop in 2010, and it lasted 10 years, while my 2018 has always had some defect, be it in the battery or the keys. It’s a machine I’m disgusted to use every day, but I’ll keep using it until it finally breathes its last, because money doesn’t grow on trees.
Anyway, back to my wife, she introduced me to keyboards that she found interesting, and they all had one thing in common. They were kind of fancy, had a lot of lights, and they were recommended to her by one of those youtubers.
I asked her to try my Keychron K2 and she really liked it. One of the things she appreciated most was that it’s the same width as her laptop keyboard. So I gave it to her and bought another one for myself. It was her first contact with a mechanical keyboard and it took her a few days to get used to it, but this is just an observation. I’m not trying to tell you that a mechanical keyboard is better or not.
Some people seem to be so obsessed with keyboards that they end up forgetting what role this device will play in their day-to-day life, be it as an accountant, a programmer, a gamer, a student, and so on. Some companies add a few RGB lights and voila, the keyboard is perfect. Also, I consider it a disservice what some “content creators” do, like writing biased product reviews in exchange for some kind of compensation, mostly to get people to buy products without considering other important aspects.
Buying a keyboard should be like buying an office chair. You have to try it out, see if you like it or not, and then buy it. Some questions you should ask yourself are: do I suffer from a problem like tendonitis, or which layout will best suit my use, or which keyboard will promote better ergonomics, or how many hours a day will I spend typing?
I said above that I didn’t want to mislead you into thinking that a mechanical keyboard is better. For example, if you have a problem with chronic hand pain due to repetitive strain, no mechanical keyboard is going to solve that problem. Using the x or y switch won’t make you type faster or better. In the case of switches, for example, this has more to do with how your fingers feel when you type, and will not provide a significant improvement unless you are a gamer and need the trigger point to be faster. This is probably one of those cases where you’ll want to look for a keyboard that makes you pronate your hands less, or an ortholinear keyboard.
In fact, most people suffer from using a keyboard because of bad habits and perhaps a historical legacy related to how the qwert layout was designed to optimize the working mechanism of typewriters.
Keyboard Layout Comparison
Well, what are the most common keyboard layout types?
The first is the old full size (or 100%). This keyboard derives from the IBM model M keyboard. The original consisted of a 101-keys keyboard that was divided into four basic groups:
The first group was the alphabet and punctuation keys, followed by the middle group with the navigation keys and, for example, page up and page down, then the group of number keys, and finally the group of function keys located on the top.
Basically, the full sized keyboard that we see today has 103 keys, where, in the 90s, with creation of windows 95, two super keys (or windows keys, as you will) were added, one on the left side, between the ctrl and alt, and one on the right.
The second most popular keyboard layout is tenkeyless or tkl (80%).
Already in the mid-90s, the use of computers for personal purposes or even for games, popularized the use of the mouse. Well, if you’ve ever used a full sized keyboard with a mouse, you must have already realized how uncomfortable it was to have to stretch your arm far away to use it. Unless you were a casual user, this could possibly have caused some pain or tension in your shoulder area.
For this reason, and also because the number keys are so little used, there was a need to remove them. Hence, the name tenkeyless, which literally means “without ten keys”.
The third type of layout, 75% keyboards, is perhaps the most popular type of keyboard out there, due to the fact that many people who have ever used a laptop, used one whose keys had this shape. For example, if you’ve ever used an apple macbook, you’ve used a keyboard 75%. Basically this keyboard is a tenkeyless keyboard but slightly reduced and with the navigation keys together the shift and ctrl keys on the right side.
There are some laptops that bring the layout 100%, but generally this forces you to not be centered with the screen. For some people, this is not much big of deal, however I don’t particularly like it at all.
One of the brands that has become well known for offering keyboards in this format is, for example, Keychron with their k2 model (the same one my wife is currently using). The keyboard model I currently use is also a 75%, but in this case it is the model 3084b from the brand Akko. The reason I bought a different brand and not another Keychron was the logistics and the overall price, as they’re quite similar in quality.
Okay, let’s move on to the 65% model.
This keyboard variant is very similar to the 75%, but the function keys have been removed. In this case, possibly this keyboard has a fn key in which you configure some shortcuts to have the same functionality as if had the missing keys. For me, since the function keys represent a full line of interesting shortcuts itself without having to configure any macros, I had a hard time adapting and went back to 75%.
Well, from now onwards we start to get into a dark place. And you might also be wondering what the next step for a keyboard would be. The answer for me is that we’ve reached the limit, but some trailblazers have tried to reduce the model to 60% and have removed the navigation keys, as of the page up and page down keys as well.
This model is, personally, the most confusing and requires a lot of mental effort to get used to, since it’s necessary to configure a series of shortcut functions to replace the missing keys, and I sincerely believe that this mental effort, especially when you use the keyboard for study or to work, does not pay off.
I’ve commented in obscure places, so obviously I won’t go into the merits of keyboards that go beyond that, like the 55% or 40%.
Alright, so after all, is it possible to get the perfect keyboard?
Well, if you’ve read this far, you might have noticed that I really don’t believe that any keyboard layout you choose, be it a $10 plastic keyboard or fancy one with rgb lights and custom keycaps will make any keyboard perfect.
In fact, most people’s problems are not the layout or the keyboard itself, but possibly never having trained to type using all their fingers. I myself remember being surprised to learn that those small bumps on the f and j keys serves to tactilely indicate where our index fingers, respectively, should be positioned.
And here’s the moral of the story: always sit comfortably, grab the keyboard you like, and just practice. This will make you a better typist, not necessarily the device. Basically, our bodies tend to get used to repetitive movements - for example, unless you speak a foreign language, you hardly think about being able to speak. The same is true when we type. If we type incorrectly, we end up encouraging our brain to continue a bad habit.
There are even some very interesting websites that help you correct your typos. Some even have words in languages other than English:
That’s it for today…