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CarlW
58
Jan 16, 2017
I have one with Red Cherry MX switches. Lighter than the POK3R (obviously), but the Core aluminium case doesn't move at all. Keycaps are 1/2 as tall as the POK3R. Typing English sentences w/o special characters feels great.
It is an excellent travel size. When packing light, this fits much more easily into a laptop bag than a 60% in all dimension (length, width, keycap height).
Special chars and numbers take some getting used to, but people buying a 40% will know this going in. The layout documentation included in the Core doesn't match the actual keyboard, so I had to experiment to find the true layout. The keycaps top and side printing is already crammed with characters, so you'll have to memorize those not labeled. My model doesn't have ! and @ printed on any keycap, so I have to remember that they're Fn1+Shift+Caps and Fn1+Shift+A, respectively. Maybe they need to open up the right side of the keycaps for printing these extra chars?
The biggest drawback for me is no left Fn modifier and no DIP switch as in the POK3R to put an Fn on the Caps Lock. This makes the arrows mapping to IJKL useless. You either have to hit the Fn with your right thumb or move your left hand under your right. You can map Fn + WASD to the arrow keys however. There is an interesting mode to turn some right hand modifiers into arrows, but I use the right shift too much typing computer code to make this viable.
The version I have does not allow you to program the split space bar independently. For example, programming left space bar to Enter also programs the right space bar to Enter. I hope this will be fixed in a firmware update. The left space bar also doesn't have a stabilizer.
Finally, the cable is Micro USB.
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