Ok many have been asking for my QMK/ZMK configs, here they are: Corne - github.com/Me163/keyboard_layouts_qmk/tree/master/corne Iris - github.com/Me163/keyboard_layouts_qmk/tree/master/iris Kinesis Advantage 360 - github.com/Me163/Adv360-Pro-ZMK Glove80 - github.com/Me163/glove80-zmk-config Chocofi - github.com/Me163/zmk-config-chocofi I'm not making the Piantor available quite yet as setting it up was a bit of an oddball compared to the rest and I'm not sure if I did it right. But the layout I use on the Piantor is identical to the one I use on the Corne.

Every time I see anyone going split ortholinear I regain faith in humanity. You reaching up to the glove80 really impressed me

I've been using a plank but now I'm ready to get a chocofi keyboard. Thank you so much for such a high quality video and awesome introduction to these next-gen keyboards!

One year ago, having switched to vim, I decided to go one step further and try out a Ferris Sweep v2 (34 keys) with a custom layout and put my mod keys on the home row. I liked the elegant minimalist design. It's so comfortable to work with it, I'm never going back to a traditionnal keyboard, ever.

This is such an incredible video. I have been looking into purchasing a split keyboard and this video is huge help. Thanks a lot!

This video is on par with a Project Farm tool comparison video. Super well done. Great research and presentation of each keyboard, as well as your journey.

Great video. thanks for digging into the details!

Wow, this video has been quite interesting. I dont think that I will use a split keyboard ever, but those home row mods sound so good. Thats right up my alley of keyboard optimization. I will definitely try that one.

Really high quality video. Pacing and script was on point

I've been transitionning to split keyboard since two month ago. And I'm loving it ! Bought the Voyager zsa, it small enough to take everywhere, beautifull and pretty reliable. It takes some time to configurethe layout to your liking, but once it's done there's nothing that will make me come back to a traditionnal keyboard

really appreciate the time and effort put into this video .

These keyboards are really cool. the way you explained every keyboard is very good

I recently got a ZSA Moonlander, I've been very happy with it so far. This video has given me some great ideas on new layers and macros to try. Thanks!

6:28 Thank you so much for showing this! After watching the video I looked it up and it's a game changer for me!

I've loved ergo boards since the original off white/grey Microsoft Natural keyboard that I used for a very long time. My first foray into split boards was the Kinesis Freestyle RGB. And what really got me to find it was a RGB. At the time I was using a black MS 4000 and the only thing I didn't like was not being able to see the keys when I had my room dark. I kept looking for an ergo RGB board now and again until the Kinesis finally showed up on the scene. I liked the board overall and being able to do a shoulder width split and tenting was just awesome. Still a staggered board though. It wasn't until a few years later that the ergo world took off and like you, my number of boards has grown. I got a ZSA Moonlander, which I really love, and that was my first experience with columnar and QMK. Like you, I hooked a lot of my layers to hold down home row keys and that's completely changed how I interact with the computer for the better. It makes it kind of hard to use a normal keyboard now, like on my laptop. It's like I forget what a lot of the combos for certain shortcuts are now because they are just baked into the layers I created, which is awesome. Hold down F to change my right hand to arrow keys and other cursor movements like home, end, move forward word, move back word, is just awesome. The Moonlander lead me to splurge on the Planck EZ Glow, which I like for completely different reasons and has almost the same layer setup as my Moonlander. Then the Voyager came out, which I'm using right now and is my first experience with Choc switches. I really like the Voyager. And I'm waiting on a Dygma Defy to show up. Crazy how expensive a keyboard hobby can get. Not as bad as rediscovering Lego as an adult, but still pretty bad.

Happily been using Corne for bit over 2 years now. Love it.

I've spend so many hours researching keyboards. Ended up with the sofle(corne + number keys). It's a great starter board for those of us who could not commit to only 3 rows. Super expensive to get it imported here to Sweden, but totally worth it! Having vim arrow keys is just the best!

I was curious about the corne and was leaning towards that to start my nextgen keyboard journey. After watching this, I think the Kinesis and the glove80 would suit me better. Thanks for the video man!

I ended up buying the piantor after a month of looking through options. It should be here in a month or so, and I'm excited to try it out. I wouldn't have known about it without this video. I think it is the fewest keys I could go to without previously using a next gen keyboard.

I have KinesisAdvantage2, Moonlander and now, you have convinced me to buy Glove80, just bought it, and can't wait for delivery :)

I respect your commitment.

glove80 truly is the endgame. I love mine.

It’s amazing how similar our keyboard journeys are, i went sofle where you went iris, i went 36 key choc corne straight away after. My next step is a chardybis nano though, 36 keys like the chocify but sculpted like the glove. you sure you don’t need a new board? 👀

Here an user of two cornes, (one MX and a choc), Happy to know about other compact kbs and even happier about the home row. Great explanations and video as always.

great video and a better list of what is available than what i was able to find when i was looking into it. you might want to look into different key layouts. im using a modified version of halmak. there is a bunch of misinformation, like travel being bad. what you really want is clustered travel. those buttons on the top of the keyboard that you dont use often would be great global control for your layers. so no matter what layer you are on you can navigate to the typing mode with the push of one button. these families of infrequent buttons matter but dont fit with the current paradigm. what we really should use is space on left hand pointer, and backspace one to the right. my current loadout uses that one for all punctuations. single press is apostraphee, double is semi, double hold is colon. but while i use colon more frequently than expected, i rarely use apostraphe. so there is a small stretch for mistakes. and it would be better if we could macro in 'delete word' to the backspace. on the right hand home row of halmak is the main vowels : aeoi. on the left hand of my modified halmak is : shnt from left to right. what i noticed and changed in terms of layout is a shift from simple likelyhood to treat consonant clusters together. having nt next to one another is great. and st is also nice. also it is nice that since words have small clusters of consonants and then vowels, i can alternatively pater pressing down with one hand then the other. you mentioned wanting to avoid using the pinky, but i find it easiest cause you can use your whole hand slightly rotating it. your pinky and ring finger share mostly the same muscles so your pinky is probably more useful. but some of the layout is ucky. i have w in the pinky collum of my non dominant hand. and it is bad. also i moved the tab away which was a really bad choice. emacs is a bit over rated but the different navigation and text in modes seem nice. i put the arrows on the bottom row of my loadout is emacs layout and it is... okay. better than an inverted T. there have been solutions for navigating uis without directly using a mouse and that seems to be the bigger jump awaiting us. i started with moonlander and moving the mouse with the keyboard is painful. they have special move mouse in cardinal directions commands but they dont go to items on the screen it is just pixel adjustments. i think we need to have a new generation of more context aware boards.

Thanks for sharing, and it was very informative.

This is my favorite keyboard explanation video I've seen so far! It's the one I'm going to send to my physical therapist so he doesn't have to listen to me ramble and gush over keyboards. I've been just getting into mechanical keyboard and I had a similar religious experience when I bought my first upgrade to the Womier SK71 recently. For maybe about 8 months I've had my eye on the glove80 but haven't been able to bring myself to get it. And then very recently I find out the "unsoldered" version isn't hot swappable, just sans switches soldered in. Nuuuuu, not my perfect grail/endgame keyboard gone off and made me go back to square one. I was really interested in the pro red linears since I have some finger joint issues, but if they end up being too light I'll bottom out and it'll be worse. At that price point, I really wanted to get to try out different switches and if I ever need to lube them I'm not down to solder them all. I'm a little torn and I'm considering buying something like the glove80, iris, or moonlander which all aren't exactly what. I want... and going off the rails and going full dactyl manuform mode. I think for me per-key RGB is a must to help show a layer noob like me which layer I'm on and where the keys are on that layer. I'm trying not to lose too many keys at once and I'm not even sure if I'd do better with the regular switches or the choc. If only Best Buy were full of these and I could stroll down and give them a try 😅

I got a Lily58 as my first split board and I'm quite happy with it. It took an adjustment period but after a month or so I'm quite proficient with it and I don't see myself going back to a regular keyboard ever.

Just ordered parts for an ergo travel. I like the look of the inside keys for brackets instead of having extra keys on the pinkeys

I've definitely gone down the keyboard rabbit hole... but have not been as brave as you to tally up how much I've spent on it lol. I wish I had this video when I was starting out. I don't know if it would have the same effect as going through the motions myself and eventually settling on one of the keyboards in your list (I love my corne wireless keyboard!) but it would've been nice to have something to compare my experience to along the way. For anyone starting on this journey, I'd re-visit this as you explore choices and see if they're similar to yours. You could save quite a bit of time and money.

The mini42 and mini36 by controllerworks are some other boards similar to the corne, chocofi, and piantor layout. The RP2040 MCU circuitry and OLED display are embedded onto the board making it as small as possible. The top half of the case is CNC aluminum designed to fit the board and switches with a nicely designed bottom plate for RGB light diffusion. It's very nice If you want something premium feeling in addition to ergonomics. In addition to that, they've integrated esd and over current protection for the trrs cable design so you don't accidentally short the board(s) when disconnect them while powered. For around the same price as most presoldered, it's not a bad deal.

Love this!

You got into the rabbit hole. I started off with a refurbished Corsair K70 and now I'm writing this on a mountain everest keyboard with lubed and filmed holy pandas switches and pbs keycaps. It's an amazing keyboard but this is the hobby you want if your thing is loosing money.

Thankyou for you service

So if you are a dev and you have extra keys that you don't use for typing. Build macros on those keys. Like write out default function/class structures, logging, etc etc. Saves a lot of time

While I appreciate the information and will definitely take a look at the glove80 as a starting point. I just do not understand the keyboard minimalist things for software devs, 99.9% of the time typing is not my bottleneck it's thinking about what I'm doing, also I can't be alone in having a very physical muscle memory that doesn't like key locations switching purpose (AKA layers) same reason I don't like virtual desktops and do like many, many monitors. I think I'd consider the glove80 split 3 ways with a numpad and extra keys on the sides for little used functions. I swear that I'd prefer to have no overloading on symbol keys at all

I have a corne but I'm in love with the charybdis nano, the one without number row, 6 columns (just as the corne) and with a trackball. It has a curved dactyl form but it's so expensive and hard to get!!

Down the rabbit hole I go! I ordered a Piantor after watching this vid - I've wrestled with touch typing ergonomics for a lot longer than necessary, it seems.... I'm going to give Colemak-DH a try while I'm at it, - this should be a fun journey!

Awesome video. Been using the Corne for over a year and love it. Do you ever ever think about going back to staggered? I’m gonna guess no but would love to hear any reasons you’ve ever considered it

I'm curious to see if you will get the Digma Defy to keep this journey on - and record your impressions on it - also the Digma Raise with the tenting kit. Cheers from Brazil, thanks for the great video.

I feel like you're me, but further along the journey, I got the Q1, loved it, got the Iris, loved it, experimented with removing the top row ... loved it and started looking into a corne... Haven't pulled the trigger yet because I wanted to try removing the outer column first, and I dont want to buy two keyboards, well I do, but theyre expesive and a hazzle to buy from europe. Currently in the process of swiching to Colemak-DH, and once I feel comfortable with that I'm going to try a 36 over 42 to see if I should get a Corne, or something else. Great video!

Thank you. Just ordered a lily58 and this gave me somehow a preface of my future spendings (and lengthy explanations with my wife why this is such a necesssry expense 😮)

I've got a Kyria and an Ergodox (which I never use) I have a 36 key layout on my kyria though, so I'm planning on downsizing to a Chocofi (for working outside of home) and a skeletyl (a 3x5 + 3 dactyl manuform designed by Bastardkb) for use in my home office. LOVE me some home row mods, I also have layers on each of my thumb keys to get to symbols and numbers. Personally I don't think I'll ever go back to a fullsize board for just regular writing and programming, I have done way too many little convenience tweaks. Plus my vim muscle memory relies on the layout I currently use. Gaming sucks though, so I'll probably get a backup 60% board for playing games

For someone who has extreme wrist pain and RSI issues, which is the MOST comfortable and less fatiguing to type on for a full work day? I assume it would be the glove 80 or the Kinesis? Among those two boards, do you feel that the comfort level is the same, or is one more comfy than the other?

love your keyboard

Actually a really good informative video. Although I couldn't help but notice the "H" and "G" key were the wrong way around on the Corne v3. I just couldnt unsee it haha

I'm actually upgrading from an ergodox I built to a glove80, so this video was interesting to me.

We need a link to your keymap, zmk and qmk pls :D Also have you tried using combos to replace the keys you placed on your extra pinky column? I find the use of combos to be awesome for keys like escape and backspace, at least on my ferris sweep (rust keyboard btw)

I've been using a Corne for a few weeks now and can say that it's an absolute joy to use. I've been using home row mods for about a week and can definitely see the benefits although I'm going to need a little more time to really get used to them. Speaking of switches, have you tried the new kailh sunset switches? They're definitely the best ones I've ever used for low profile choc keys!

Nice video! I'm inspired to take the plunge into ergo KBs. Also, have you noticed, while editing this video, that your M an N keys are switched on the corne? 🤣

Highly recommend the moonlander. To me, it just feels like some of the best of everything shown here. Like the Kinesis with the tenting and thumb clusters, but way less expensive, linear keys with stagger for finger length, pretty good portability with the only real downside being the need to untent before you go. Also Oryx is by far the best customization software I've used

Great video. We need to see more of these types of videos . I would add two very important things. 1. The corn keyboard now comes in low profile version. 2. I think very aggressive pinky staggers are a mistake. The corne is more ergonomic for sure... The very aggressive pinky staggers cause you to pull down your pinky further which is quite unnatural when done repetitively. Again great video.

My guy, our mech key journey began almost exactly the same, only I bought Defender's, and it had wireless capabilities to boot, but for a price hardly higher Redragon's device. It features 7 color backlight with adjustable brightness and where applicable - speed of the light show.

$40 full sized Chrerry MX Red mech keeb from 5 years ago still going strong 💪 The key to making it perform like a $400 keeb: Space Cadet like mappings through karabiner and xmodmap

Damn, I didn’t know I needed a video like this. I’ve tried many keyboards as well, classic and split, also 32-key keyboards. I think I’m gonna get a Piantor 🤔 By the way, what about the Moonlander by ZSA?

I feel scared watching this video, but it's one of my absolute favorite videos on youtube. I used mechanical keyboards before, and entered the world of next gen keyboards with the corne in January, then got the lily58 just in case I need the number row, turns out... I don't use it at all anymore. And now I want to try the chocofi and the piantor... coincidence ? I don't think so. Anyways, great content ! could you share your configuration of home row mods ? I feel like I have a hard time getting used to them on heavier switches, but on lighter switches they work wonders !

Thank you for this video! I'm a little while out of college & decided I wanted to invest in a quality keyboard as a software engineer since I use it so much awhile ago. Well now, Im going to order a piantor to take a leap of faith to help with wrist pain and a better typing experience since Ive never been fully comfortable with QWERTY

I have a Corne but am looking at a premade called the Defy by Dygma Labs that is about to ship. It has a lot of optional features including built in tenting and an interesting thumb key design.

Loved this video and your journey is similar to mine. Currently at the corne stage but I’ve not figured it out yet and keep going back to my preonic keyboard. Do you have a link to your corne layout btw?

great video! For me, an integrated pointing device is the future killer feature of any split/ergo/mech keyboard. Luckily it starts…. slowly.

I'm an Iris user myself.. been building them since the rev2 days where you soldered like 300 things to each half. Took about 4 to 6 hours to make one. The latest rev8 with the solid aluminum hefty frame is so nice.. keyboard doesn't move at all. That Glove 80 looks interesting though but I wouldn't want more than the keys I have on the iris with the exception of a pointer (index) finger set of two keys on each half in the center. I got used to that layout on my Model 01 (have you checked that one out??) and liked it because to your point about less finger travel, having tab/enter and/or a few other keys is very nice. I would absolutely love to go to the 3 row keyboards.. just not sure I am willing to spend the time to learn how to remember to use home keys to shift/hold in to numbers, etc.

I converted to both split column staggered keyboard and colemak (and learnt vim) at the same time 10 months ago and it's one of the best decisions I ever made. I always take pleasure typing anything on my keyboard now. Now that I'm there, I really don't get the keyboard channel that stay in the old typewriter realm. I am using a keyboard that is very similar to the piantor but has an additonal thumb key in the exterior of each thumb called the claw44 (though it's only available from Japan I think).

For boards like the chocify, piantor, and corne, you can build them for $100 if you really try and stick to budget switches and keycaps. I built my choc corne for $150, but printed the case and soldered it myself though.

Code to Moon, do you feel the Glove 80 thumb cluster more comfortable than on the Kinesis?

finally someone else with a corne

Finally got my moonlander and I'm pretty happy with it, but will definitely need to try a concave keywell at some point, I should probably actually use my ender 5 and build my own dactyl... But first a switch change and maybe try to mod in a trackpoint or joystick (attached through one of the hotswap ports).

I ended up with 3 moonlanders all in 40 keys configuration :) I have one at home, one in the office and one spare for testing new ideas..

What is it with CttM making videos about topics I just right now are interested in. First the DoomEmacs video, now a ergo keyboard video. This has helped me a lot in choosing a new board to replace my over 10 year old G710+. Not because I'll be using any of the boards being shown, but rather because I was hesitant in switching to a smaller board and using layers. Thanks!

Great video. You inspire me to try out using less keys. I always hate when programming and having to type {, } \ etc... I figure before I go out and buy a 60% keybard I just start by modding my 75% keyboard and getting a feeling of using layers in the keyboard. What software for windows do you recommend?

I’d like to go deeper down the rabbit hole, but I’m afraid of not being able to use a laptop anymore. It’s great to just have a single device to carry around and do some work.

Insane how loud those "silent" switches are

I'm used to the ANSI layout, but I bought my last laptop with the UK layout. I am still not used to it. Imagine if I had to entirely switch to that strange ergonomic double keyboard. I am too old for such a change.

ESC at its usual position is still the most satisfying key to slam. Change my mind!

I got the zsa moonlander I really like it but I had been wondering how some people use less keys like you showed and I really like the idea of home row modifiers.

Been down this rabbit-hole also.. Gone through many but currently stabilized on Adv 360 and Keyboardio Atreus. Intrigued about the glove 80 tho.. But for the time have sated my ravenous rabid thirst... as what happens when you fall down this hole... Thirst quenched... for now..

This dude is just good at typeing hands down. The fact that you can adapt to the different layouts like that is kinda crazy.

Can we get a zmk repo. I pretty much had the same thoughs about 36 and 42 key boards and it would help tremendously if could copy your stuff over. Great video btw!

My path: Logitech G710+ with Cherry Browns, Keebio KBO-5000 with Kaihl Hako Violets and Chosfox x Kailh Arctic Fox for function keys, and now resting on a 3D Printed hand-wired Dactyl 5x6 with 4 thumb clusters, using a mix of Akko Jelly Lavenders and Kaihl Owl Whites for function keys, with some spare Hako Voilets on things I want more friction on. I'm thinking about building a split Planck next for portable use, though I'd really love to just build a Corne. That said, the Glove80? Looks amazing, but dear lord the price...

Kmonad or similar software(keyd, ktrl, kanata) can have most features of qmk/zmk boards. This could be helpful if you want to experiment with layout without spending. I do think concave keyboards are much better.

- Doctor I have a problem, please help me. - Sure thing, please take a seat and tell me everything - Hold on, let me take my 78 split keyboards that fit perfectly in my pockets - Oh, I see....NURSEEEEE!

I spent a ton of money on keyboards too. Eventually settled on the UHK. Only gripe is that the arrow keys are chorded, and you have to hold another key to use them.

I'm curious how you replace the mouse with a chocify keyboard. Is there a way to drop a lenovo trackpoint on there? If you want to keep your keys on the home row, don't you also need a mouse?

I think I'm moving from corne to piantor or cantor, whatever has more vertical stagger for that P letter that I fail to hit since forever.

I basically only like Clicky switches. The heavy glass trigger effect keeps me from making (more) typos, and it helps me to tell when I've fully pressed a key.

have you seen the fulcrum keyboard? it has a 5 way thumb switch which fits our opposable thumbs more naturally than keys do

For all the ppl who aren’t ready to commit to the ortho lifestyle but still don’t want carpal tunnel, I have to say that I really do like my Cloud Nine split keyboard with 10 key. Having grown up with old school mechanical Apple and IBM keyboards for many years, eventually settling on the Microsoft Natural (PS2 version) for more than a decade, unfortunately it slowly died (not to mention the fact that PS/2 is difficult to support on modern systems). I tried some of Microsoft’s “new” versions, but they were all pretty bad and not at all an improvement. I tried the Cloud Nine, and it gave me a lot of the original Microsoft Natural ergo and good enough keys/switches at a decent price. Maybe one day I’ll bite the bullet and go with a Kinesis or glove80, but not yet.

Have you ever considered switching from QWERTY to DVORAK? I suffered from RSI around 15 years ago and switched to DVORAK back then. Honestly I can't ever imagine going back to QWERTY as I find DVORAK so much more efficient. It takes a few months to get back to the same speed after learning DVORAK I found, and using a print-out of the layout as a reference while learning helped me. I just stuck it on my monitor as a reference for the first week or two. Seems like that may be the cherry on top of the keyboard cake you have going there! 😊

Will you buy the dygma defy? I think that this will be a hot topic and a huge alternative in this keyboard area :)

Planning on getting the Dygma Defy

oh no... a new rabbit hole to dive into

What is the typing game with the cars that you are playing and where can I find it?

The home row mod thing is intriguing. But don't you get issues when typing fast where you intended to type two letters but they overlapped so it interprets it as a mod key combo?

My game dev friend saw this and is in the process of building a ferris sweep, which is like the chocofi but with 34 keys instead of 36

I loved my x-bows, but it wasn't configurable enough, so I went to a K8 pro. Still drooling over the keyboardio and moonlander though. I use that same reddragon (with browns) on my gaming desktop I don't think I could go to a sub-50% keyboard. Just too many dedicated keys missing.

When I saw possibility to have different action, especially modifier/layer swith on hold, I immediately figured out home row modifier as must. But to this day I didn't move from my M$ ergonomic 4000 to my first 'better' keyboard -- ergodox ez because of 2 things: combinations: every bigger program/ide wants you to press ctrl+alt+shift F13, which is hard to achieve even will all keys ergodox has, so I'd really like to know how (if) you tackled this with those small boards. Yes and second reason I still did not transition is insufficient negative tilt support and board instability. I need to create some custom support, which is stable and good. The ergodox 'legs' are garbage and palm rests as well. Good negative tilt with palm support is simply not possible out of the box, the board is not stable at all. The glove80 looks nice, but also does not seem to have sufficient palm support/negative tilt. And that tripod mounting, jeez, that will suck to type on it.

Great video! Could you share your glove80 key map?

I like that they worked for you, but I have a big beef against "ergo" keyboards. First, the home row is bs, we don't have naturally horizontal-lined same size fingers, when centering your index fingers on the home row your fingers land in AWEF/JIO; respectively, so you fingers moving one key span an area that covers 4 rows, so 3 is too little/less efficient. Also it is better for your health to move and shift your position frequently when working, instead of staying at one fixed position, which these keyboards are focused on. Sure you can move the ergo keyboards, but that is longer than shifting your body a little, and requires that you take your hands off the home row (OMG). It's nice that it works for some people, but to really reduce getting tired and avoid getting injuries I always recommend using a smaller keyboard (personally I settled on 65%) and getting a good wrist rest for both the keyboard and mouse to avoid getting carpal/cubital tunnel syndrome.

I'm waiting on my first proper keyboard It's a buckling spring Mini M TKL. I don't have any wrist pain and I'm still young so I'll stay away from the quirky layouts for now. Primegen is poggers, fellow Neovim users unite.

Best split keyboard comparison currently online! Question please: How does the “height” (curvature seems the same) of the keycaps influence your tactile “situational awareness” between the Kinesis Advantage360 vs Glove80? As you move your fingers back and forth, is one keyboard easier for you to get back to the home row or locate some far-away key? I speak from my own experience of “normal height” vs “flatter” keyboards. It seems to me like the “edges” and “walls” of the taller keycaps to aid as a reference on the Kinesis (non split… haven’t migrated to the Advantage360 yet). Sorry for the metaphors, hopefully I’m sorta-kinda understandable? Also, have you noticed any touch-typing speed difference between the Advantage360 and the Glove80? Thanks so much for the effort you put into buying, comparing, shooting, editing… As a film guy, I realize how much work such a condensed 13 minutes require!

I've been using a Kinesis Advantage for fifteen years. Well worth the money. Most employers will let you expense ergo-related devices as a healthcare item.