Truly Ergonomic Mechanical Keyboard Model 209 Discussions | Drop

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Truly Ergonomic Mechanical Keyboard Model 209

Mech Keys

FULL DISCUSSION

judascleric

Oct 1, 2013

Please offer the Model 209. It is a pretty important feature to have ctrl/cmd/alt on a Mac and I'm not sure why you wouldn't want two extra keys to work with when using win/linux. I bought a Model 209 last year and it was my primary keyboard until I got my ErgoDox in the first group buy. I continued using the TE as my secondary keyboard until it was stolen with my backpack a few months ago. The build quality of this keyboard is fantastic. It is very solid. If you take the wrist rest off it is also very compact and makes a great travel keyboard. I kept it in my backpack and used it at coffee shops and when traveling. Laptop on the table, keyboard in my lap. On a side note, you should avoid using wrist rests, especially if you have a chair with adjustable arm rests. I was getting some wrist pain until I started using arm rests to put the weight of my arms on my forearms rather than my wrists. It took me about a week to get used to the layout and I didn't have much trouble switching between it and my laptop keyboard. The enter key placement is great. Having a thumbswitch that can be typed on either hand is an improvement and having better placement for shift and cmd/ctrl (depending on OS) is an even better change. Arrow key placement is also great, but you might want to learn to use middle/ring/pinky instead of pointer/middle/ring to make it easier to reposition by feel since you can stay on the same columns. I had to swap slash and quote keys as this seemed like the most arbitrary change. I also remapped the curious forward tick/double tick/section key to Esc. I was indifferent to the backspace and delete positioning and a little disappointed that Tab took a little more movement to reach. It is worth pointing out that having these keys in the center of the keyboard meant that you use a little less wrist movement and a little more arm movement to reach them. Tab and quote were the biggest casualties of movement economics of this layout. Neither were deal breakers and for my key frequency patterns, I think the other changes gained more than was lost. My biggest complaints against the ergonomics are the flat layout and the lack of additional thumbswitches. After getting my ErgoDox, I found the tenting allowed a much more comfortable wrist position and I used the extra thumbswitches on the ErgoDox for symbol and number/function key modifiers for the home rows and dramatically reduced wrist movement. However both of these complaints are about tradeoffs in ergonomics for portability so I can't fault the Truly Ergonomic's design as it is my favorite ergonomic mechanical travel keyboard (possibly the only one).

Oct 1, 2013