Before the Glove80, I had some other mechanical keyboards. I slowly transitioned to keyboards with fewer keys. First a 100% Corsair and Keychron, then a 70% Keychron.

Eventually, I acquired the Glove80, which is some kind of 80% keyboard. And the difference is abysmal. The first experience with the Keychron was great, but IMHO, currently it feels overpriced. There still are good keyboards.

But Glove80 and other ergo keyboards are in a different category, not only in price but in a more important field: ergonomics. Using a Keychron without a palm rest is (at least for me) impossible. But the feeling of split keyboards is another thing. These are the main characteristics that made the Glove80 one of the best:

  • Mechanical: Great for longevity and reliability.
  • Split: The best setup for ergonomics—be gentle with your wrists. Palm rest is included.
  • Low profile: This, alongside red switches or similar, reduces the fatigue of long writing sessions.
  • Concave key wells and columnar layout reduces the effort of fingers to reach distant keys.
  • Tenting: Adding some degree of tenting reduces pronation, improving the comfort of forearms and wrists.
  • ZMK firmware: Use whatever layout you want, including different layers, modifiers, etc. No more Karabiner configs for me.

A side effect of using the Glove80 is that I had to learn touch typing. I learned to type in an empiric manner; this leads me to have several vices. Using a split columnar keyboard makes these problems even more apparent. It’s funny how this design enforces you to press a key with the correct finger. It somehow forces you to type correctly. This, in turn, improved my typing speed.

I’m far from the big numbers like 100 wpm, but I think ~70 wpm it’s a pretty decent number.

Finally, it is much less noisy than regular mechanical keyboards.

This marks a turning point in my experience with keyboards. I will definitely not go back to conventional keyboards. These are expensive keyboards, but they are investments. In comfort and health. Much cheaper in the long run.

If you are curious about my layout config, here is: Glove80 ZMK layout config.s