I just don't get the obsession with eliminating the numpad. There are tons of interesting looking and innovative keyboards now and they all insist on making them as cramped as possible.
It makes sense on a laptop. But, if I already need to have a clear place on my desk for the keyboard and mouse, I'd rather just use an extra 2 inches to have the full size keyboard with the numpad and arrow keys that are not crammed against the rest of the keyboard.
Numpad forces you to move the more important piece of input equipment - mouse - further away. And with a properly aligned keyboard (none pictured in the article) it's better to have numpad near your right hand home row keys anyway to use with a modifier. Even more so for the cursor keys - instead of having to move your wrist back&forth you could just use the home row keys for that
Same. I use my numpad constantly - Excel, programming, VoIP, calc, etc.
I don't use the number row above my keyboard except on rare occasions or to type the shifted characters. If I need to quickly type a number without looking, the numpad is the only way to do that (for me).
I tried a friends "compact" gaming keyboard, and then to the right of his keyboard was a separate "macro" keyboard which was basically just a numpad... so why not just have a numpad?
Numpads are specialist equipment now that data entry is much less common than the past, as everything is digitized/scanned.
The other advantage of a separate numpad is that you can position it for better ergonomics; a full sized keyboard usually forces either the mouse or the keyboard into a more awkward position.
Some keyboards come with a wireless numpad which can be freely repositioned, such as the old MS ergonomic keyboard. Although, wireless does come with its own battery and responsiveness issues.
If you have programmable keyboard then it's trivial to throw numpad into a layer if you so wish and avoid the ergonomic problems of conventional numpad. Especially if you have ortholinear layout then the difference between real numpad and a layered one should be small.
Overall the ergonomic trend seems to be towards reducing wrist movement, thats why layouts like Corne are relatively popular, you can basically keep your hands at "home row position" all the time.
I do also think that numpads are also simply just less useful today than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Back in the days lot of data was still on paper or some other disconnected form. But these days? Where are you getting all those numbers that you are entering on numpad? What numeric data are you handling that is not already on your computer? I really do believe there has been shift in workflows so that people are far less typing in strings of numbers all the time.
My keyboard has no influence on mouse placement though? My mouse is not positioned laterally to the keyboard, it's diagonally in front and to the right or on a completely separate pullout with mouse pad. Not to mention, I almost never use it.
I strongly recommend learning to mouse with your nondominant hand, at least for tasks that don’t require a ton of precision. Saved me a ton of shoulder pain.
I've thought like this before but it's nice having a smaller keyboard, you can keep your hands closer together which is nice and unless you’re doing a lot of accounting, you don't really regularly use the numpad. Best configuration I've found is to have a separate numpad/macro keypad that you can keep off to the side on your desk.
It is popular in PC FPS gaming to have a smaller keyboard so you can go more distance to the left with your mouse hand before running out of space. Have you never hit your keyboard with your mouse? More likely to happen when playing with lower DPI/sensitivity. I don't use numpad for anything while gaming so it's extra space I'm happy to get rid of. All these people saying they don't get why someone would want a smaller keyboard are probably confused because they don't play FPS or games that require mouse space beyond their 6 inch mousepad.
Some gamers even position their keyboards at very harsh angles or nigh perpendicular to their body all just to make more space.
I bought a keyboard without the numpad about ten years ago and rarely miss it (I do have the arrows and keys above them). I would miss it with my work keyboard, but I don't miss it on my personal use gaming PC.
Just add a USB 10 key keyboard. Actually, it'd be neat if they made a keyboard with a detachable 10 key portion. Add a USB port so it can plug into the larger keyboard as an accessory.
I don't like moving across the numerical keypad area with my right hand every time I switch from typing to mousing. That extra few inches adds up over a long coding session.
I don't get the tiny keyboard obsession either, I've got a tenkeyless so no numpad but an area for arrow keys, page up/down etc. and it's a good compromise. For me, the numpad would conflict with what I already put next to my keyboard--my trackpad.
I got a nice numpadless mechanical keyboard to conserve my deskspace, and because I never used the numpad anyway. Then I promptly got into Blender, which makes great use of the numpad for zooming, rotating etc.
I agree. I really like the Keydous NJ98 CP he V2 something that's full sized with hall effect, BUT ut also is compatible with regular mechanical switches. It really should be a standard.
Well, I personally don’t mind removal of numpad because it is badly designed. Telephone style numpad are a much better design. I have no idea on why we are stuck with such a bad design.
I bought this in their pre-release sale and sold it immediately after the first day. It’s incredibly large and heavy, cheap keycaps, action doesn’t really feel nice for typing, latency was high, wired only, and I could not find a good use for the multi-stage-activation feature.
With the high latency (I measured up to 90ms at 1000hz which is ridiculously high), and competitive games banning use of macros, it’s pretty useless for gaming.
I also have a poor experience with a Nuphy wireless keyboard - it suffers terribly from interference. If the dongle is further than a ft away, especially if there's no line of sight, then it has terrible latency + will miss keypresses + double keypress.
I still use it every day and have for a couple years now, but it's annoying to have to have the keyboard so close to my dock.
Makes me wonder what Logitech is doing differently with their 2.4ghz dongles that makes them work so well.
Interesting, their configuration tool runs in browser and they explicitly mention linux; I don't have much experience with gaming keyboards but the only one I bought in the past had some windows-only configuration software and was a bit of a pain.
(this keyboard does not appear to be QMK-based, but for the record) any keyboard that runs QMK (an open-source firmware for keyboards) will offer the same experience. web-based configurator and full linux support.
Configuration stored _on the device_ and not needing the software to autorun every time you reboot to get your settings back, should really be a no-brainer. There's unfortunately enough gaming keyboards and mice out there who haven't got this yet.
Many mechanical keyboards use firmware works with Web Apps that use WebUSB/WebHID APIs to allow easy cross-platform configuration. It's a welcome change over dedicated desktop software for your keyboard. All the configuration is stored and behavior is managed on the keyboard itself. This doesn't get you cool things like keyboard LED interactivity, but I can live without that.
I'm usually ambivalent about keyboards but... that one looks pretty sick. I'm still using a Filco Majestouch for my gaming / day to day use but it's at the end of its lifetime, some buttons need to "warm up" a bit before they register nowadays.
We'll see. As of the latest testing, mechanicals still show the best single-key latency performance.
I got an ROG Azoth awhile back for that reason.
Would be nice to see how far they can push the technology though!
Given that the time to physically press the key down is a part of the latency, Hall Effect could easily beat out Mechanical in the long run. After all, you can make it almost arbitrarily sensitive.
EDIT: Looks like wired mechanicals at the top end are tied (0.8ms) with the best Halls (0.8ms) and a bit better than the best wireless 2.4Ghz (1.7ms). Mea culpa. We still need more test data on Halls in general though. Removed my comment about Wireless being better - though generally wireless 2.4 GHz beats out all but the top-end wired keyboards.
2.4GHz radio is faster than most wired connections - though the top-end ones with custom high-hertz implementations are slightly better than wireless.
Radio is also generally significantly more consistent - even when the polling rates are identical. You can see this if you look at the testing done by RTings for mice and keyboards. The latency when using 2.4GHz wireless is extremely consistent, while for standard wired connections, the latency varies drastically from input to input.
Bluetooth is crap and should never be used for gaming inputs. It's both high latency and inconsistent.
I bought a magnetic keyboard recommended on HN back in 2019. I was underwhelmed by it. Mostly because it was the Keystone and is still listed as "under production" on Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lekashman/keystone-the-... . I still hold out on hope that one day, it will magically arrive.
> An Open Source Analog Keyboard with Adaptive Typing AI.
So the keyboard learns your current mistakes and fixes them in the future. This sounds excellent except once you get used to having your mistakes fixed for you, you become dependent to this type of keyboard. Personally I'm not ready for AI keyboards, I like the control I have over what I type, mistakes and all.
I hope it works out for you and get your moneys worth... How much did you pay for yours?
Many of the reasons for wanting a hall-effect keyboard are reasons I wouldn't want one, others I find no value in. I feel like the only people who would enjoy a hall effect keyboard are people using the tactile-less cherry red switches, which is only small fraction of keyboard users
If the tactile feedback both existed and was adjustable, and didn't cost more than like 5-10% over a mechanical switch, it might take off more. But for now as neat as it is, it feels extremely niche. If someone wants different activation pressures and distances, they can buy different mechanical switches and would be missing out on basically nothing.
This is because sites like this shove ads in every conceivable whitespace on the page, so you have ads/videos/images and JavaScript loading and executing from all corners of the internet. What was once a page that was supposed to give you text and images is now executing all kinds of shit you don't want or need, burning up your CPU and battery and giving you a truly horrible, janky experience even on newer phones or desktops. If you visit these sites on older phones, it's truly excruciating. All for some text of what could have been a comment on a site like this, or a blog post on a statically-hosted site which costs next to nothing to run.
Here was my experience on an M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM, in Safari with no extensions:
I can't load the page at all without the extensions. On AdGuard I'm using only the content blocker filters that don't have access to the page itself, not the advanced filter which does.
The AdGuard content blocker is my favorite for Safari even on desktop. I can't imagine browsing without it enabled.
Privacy Badger warns that some sites won't work with Google Tag Manager blocked, but in practice, that does not seem to be a serious problem. Although some will route you through Cloudflare's CAPTCHA barrier for that, you can still get in.
If a site won't work with strong ad blocking, I stop using it.
Incentivizing publishers to load massive amounts of third party JavaScript was an industry mistake and the people who write JavaScript for ads are profoundly irresponsible and unprofessional.
Which is why i block all 3rd party js by default. If your website requires 3rd party js and it is not essential for me to really visit it, most prob i am just gonna close it.
It's not even that good of an article. I tried to understand what Hall Effect is and what its advantages are, but it was so vague, beating around the bush and forwarding you to other articles on their site, that I gave up and searched on the YT mechanical keyboards channels instead.
Here's a nice intro review of a Hall Effect keyboard, from Switch and Click, which explains its features and differences compared to a normal switch keyboard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNANUquoXOA
I tried to understand what Hall Effect is and what its advantages are, but it was so vague, beating around the bush and forwarding you to other articles on their site, that I gave up and searched on the YT mechanical keyboards channels instead.
Hall effect switches have been used in model railroading for a couple of generations now. Very often to stop and start engines in hard-to-reach places with a wand.
I recently started using Firefox Focus enabled as an extension in iOS Safari, and it works great as an ad blocker. The op site loads for me. Was a hn rec from another thread I think.
Agreed. Also happened to me on this page and I’ve seen it become more common. I wonder if there is a common gaming-related ad service which does this since it feels like the EXACT behavior I see on IGN.
iOS is genuinely terrible. I appreciate the point that so is web design for many sites, but even if you ignore that, 97% of bugs on our product with no cookies, ads, analytics etc come from iOS. My favourite time burner right now is when apple pushed for new viewport units and then don't respect them. Their address bar animated design is atrocious.
iOS comes with the setting to open every web page in reader view by default, which kills all ads, cookie popus, autoplaying videos, sticky headers, etc.
It's not hard to design beautiful and usable websites, which works on all devices from the past 10-15 years.
Analogue controls are indeed an awesome concept for a keyboard. Has anyone shipped any "revolutionary" default setups, e.g., from tiny things like making your pinky suffer less by having lower actuation point to making shallow actuation type lowercase and deeper actuation type uppercase or longer holds on arrow keys accelerating the movement?
Pity, though, the progress is still stalled on the actual layout - the ergonomic splits and other improvements are still a tiny niche
The brand "Das Keyboard" did that almost 20 years ago on a non-mechanical keyboard. The activation forces were tuned in exactly that way across the keyboard. The keycaps also didn't have any legends on them, so it targeted the nerdy/elitist audience a bit. Their later keyboards seem to have gone for uniform mechanical switches though.
These days, it wouldn't be that hard to make yourself. Various brands of mechanical keyboard switches come in a variety of activation forces. Get a keyboard with swappable switches, and tune the weights to your own preference. For example, on my keyboard I use these switches with a 67g weight, but could get some 62g and 65g ones for the pinky keys.
"Endgamed" keyboard nerd here, and I was able to find different boards that were better for certain roles, until I got to WFH full time. These newfangled magnets aren't convincing enough for me to ditch my workhorses.
I had an HHKB-looking mechanical 60%, and just remapped a few things to be nicer for programming. Function key instead of caps lock, and suddenly so much was at my fingertips. Something like Fn-IJKL for arrows, and pageup/dn, home/end, located somewhere reasonable relative to the arrows. And, a bright red anodized aluminum case, which had a built-in angle, making it very nice to use. More pinky movements than usual, but I made sure to have Fn keys on both sides, to be able to give one or the other a break.
The Preonic '50%' is also pretty neat, and I was pretty productive with the default layout. Hand size was a bit of an issue, but once again, everything I could need was under my fingers with a layer change or two, or some 2-key-combo layer.
Gaming was a nonstarter on either of those boards. I need to at least have a TKL or 65+%, and have it be a sturdy tank. I love my NK87, and use it with Kailh Crystal Box Pink switches. Used to use Box Jades, but these Pinks are crispy.
If someone wanted to get crazy about their mech board and individual key strength, properties, etc, there's a dead simple option of "Buy the stiffer/softer switch as well, install in desired position". Hot-swap sockets are on plenty of keyboards these days, and I've totally heard of people using stiffer switches on the spacebar.
I wonder if with a sufficiently fast ADC measuring each switch's voltage transition, you might be able to do velocity detection with normal switches? I guess might need an ADC wired to each switch rather than row/column matrix scan.
HE sensors measure distance, if you measure often enough get velocity out of that. Linear switches should be able to do the same thing (I know almost nothing about linear switches so I might be wrong)
Edit: HE sensors not switches. HE naturally measures distance, but there are switches that have electronics that provide an on/off signal thus making the term switch not useful. If you buy a HE switch make sure you know which style you are getting.
No, not with any useful degree of granularity. The electrical contacts aren't directly driven by the mechanical switch, they mostly rely on their own spring tension to make the connection. The mechanical part simply separates them.
By measuring contact bounce, you can probably detect the difference between fast and slow presses, but not much more. Maybe three or four levels total
Would be a fun way to implement a modal text editor. Full press for normal mode, light press for insert mode. Could be unintentionally hilarious though.
Readit News
It makes sense on a laptop. But, if I already need to have a clear place on my desk for the keyboard and mouse, I'd rather just use an extra 2 inches to have the full size keyboard with the numpad and arrow keys that are not crammed against the rest of the keyboard.
I don't use the number row above my keyboard except on rare occasions or to type the shifted characters. If I need to quickly type a number without looking, the numpad is the only way to do that (for me).
I tried a friends "compact" gaming keyboard, and then to the right of his keyboard was a separate "macro" keyboard which was basically just a numpad... so why not just have a numpad?
Numpads are specialist equipment now that data entry is much less common than the past, as everything is digitized/scanned.
The other advantage of a separate numpad is that you can position it for better ergonomics; a full sized keyboard usually forces either the mouse or the keyboard into a more awkward position.
I doubt these folks do any meaningful numerical work, so they do not understand the convenience of the numpad.
The asymmetric nature of having it at the right side drives me crazy.
I want my hands at the middle of the keyboard, not cramped to the left side, with so much space at the right, for keys I almost never use.
Having said that, my current keyboard has no numpad.
Overall the ergonomic trend seems to be towards reducing wrist movement, thats why layouts like Corne are relatively popular, you can basically keep your hands at "home row position" all the time.
I do also think that numpads are also simply just less useful today than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Back in the days lot of data was still on paper or some other disconnected form. But these days? Where are you getting all those numbers that you are entering on numpad? What numeric data are you handling that is not already on your computer? I really do believe there has been shift in workflows so that people are far less typing in strings of numbers all the time.
Some gamers even position their keyboards at very harsh angles or nigh perpendicular to their body all just to make more space.
Off to buy another keyboard...
You said 2 inches but it’s actually half the width of a 13” laptop.
I can fit a compact keyboard and a trackpad in the size of a normal keyboard.
I do have a full size keyboard in my closet just in case I have to use excel someday!
that's the reason
Dead Comment
I was intrigued by the design so I wanted to share.
With the high latency (I measured up to 90ms at 1000hz which is ridiculously high), and competitive games banning use of macros, it’s pretty useless for gaming.
I still use it every day and have for a couple years now, but it's annoying to have to have the keyboard so close to my dock.
Makes me wonder what Logitech is doing differently with their 2.4ghz dongles that makes them work so well.
Deleted Comment
I got an ROG Azoth awhile back for that reason.
Would be nice to see how far they can push the technology though!
Given that the time to physically press the key down is a part of the latency, Hall Effect could easily beat out Mechanical in the long run. After all, you can make it almost arbitrarily sensitive.
EDIT: Looks like wired mechanicals at the top end are tied (0.8ms) with the best Halls (0.8ms) and a bit better than the best wireless 2.4Ghz (1.7ms). Mea culpa. We still need more test data on Halls in general though. Removed my comment about Wireless being better - though generally wireless 2.4 GHz beats out all but the top-end wired keyboards.
Radio is also generally significantly more consistent - even when the polling rates are identical. You can see this if you look at the testing done by RTings for mice and keyboards. The latency when using 2.4GHz wireless is extremely consistent, while for standard wired connections, the latency varies drastically from input to input.
Bluetooth is crap and should never be used for gaming inputs. It's both high latency and inconsistent.
But the best keyboards these days approach around 0.8 ms: https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/reviews/corsair/k100-air
So the keyboard learns your current mistakes and fixes them in the future. This sounds excellent except once you get used to having your mistakes fixed for you, you become dependent to this type of keyboard. Personally I'm not ready for AI keyboards, I like the control I have over what I type, mistakes and all.
I hope it works out for you and get your moneys worth... How much did you pay for yours?
If the tactile feedback both existed and was adjustable, and didn't cost more than like 5-10% over a mechanical switch, it might take off more. But for now as neat as it is, it feels extremely niche. If someone wants different activation pressures and distances, they can buy different mechanical switches and would be missing out on basically nothing.
This seems to be happening more often in the back half of 2024. IGN crashes nearly every page view for me these days.
Here was my experience on an M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM, in Safari with no extensions:
https://imgur.com/RDv2n7Z
This is why I have absolutely zero qualms with using an ad blocker to the fullest extent I can.
I hate what these people do to computers.
Ironically as I watched your video on Imgur, a full screen ad popped up over top of it on Imgur itself :,(
https://imgur.com/a/aBBvVum
I can't load the page at all without the extensions. On AdGuard I'm using only the content blocker filters that don't have access to the page itself, not the advanced filter which does.
The AdGuard content blocker is my favorite for Safari even on desktop. I can't imagine browsing without it enabled.
2. Use Privacy Badger.
3. Block Google Tag Manager.
All popups gone. Page works fine.
Privacy Badger warns that some sites won't work with Google Tag Manager blocked, but in practice, that does not seem to be a serious problem. Although some will route you through Cloudflare's CAPTCHA barrier for that, you can still get in.
If a site won't work with strong ad blocking, I stop using it.
PC choices are obvious, for ios I’m using AdGuard app that integrates as Safari content filter (blocks almost the same as ubo).
I was reading this article on an Iphone some hours ago. But gave up because of the ads.
Here's a nice intro review of a Hall Effect keyboard, from Switch and Click, which explains its features and differences compared to a normal switch keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNANUquoXOA
Hall effect switches have been used in model railroading for a couple of generations now. Very often to stop and start engines in hard-to-reach places with a wand.
Here's an explanation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect_sensor
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-privacy-browser/...
Hilarious that anti-annoyance software is now needed, not only to make sites nicer, but to make them functional.
It's not hard to design beautiful and usable websites, which works on all devices from the past 10-15 years.
Pity, though, the progress is still stalled on the actual layout - the ergonomic splits and other improvements are still a tiny niche
NYT article about it from back then: https://archive.is/ANcdu and a picture of it from wikipedia showing the lack of legends on the keycaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Keyboard#/media/File:DasKe...
These days, it wouldn't be that hard to make yourself. Various brands of mechanical keyboard switches come in a variety of activation forces. Get a keyboard with swappable switches, and tune the weights to your own preference. For example, on my keyboard I use these switches with a 67g weight, but could get some 62g and 65g ones for the pinky keys.
https://zealpc.net/products/zilent?variant=5894832324646
I had an HHKB-looking mechanical 60%, and just remapped a few things to be nicer for programming. Function key instead of caps lock, and suddenly so much was at my fingertips. Something like Fn-IJKL for arrows, and pageup/dn, home/end, located somewhere reasonable relative to the arrows. And, a bright red anodized aluminum case, which had a built-in angle, making it very nice to use. More pinky movements than usual, but I made sure to have Fn keys on both sides, to be able to give one or the other a break.
The Preonic '50%' is also pretty neat, and I was pretty productive with the default layout. Hand size was a bit of an issue, but once again, everything I could need was under my fingers with a layer change or two, or some 2-key-combo layer.
Gaming was a nonstarter on either of those boards. I need to at least have a TKL or 65+%, and have it be a sturdy tank. I love my NK87, and use it with Kailh Crystal Box Pink switches. Used to use Box Jades, but these Pinks are crispy.
If someone wanted to get crazy about their mech board and individual key strength, properties, etc, there's a dead simple option of "Buy the stiffer/softer switch as well, install in desired position". Hot-swap sockets are on plenty of keyboards these days, and I've totally heard of people using stiffer switches on the spacebar.
Edit: HE sensors not switches. HE naturally measures distance, but there are switches that have electronics that provide an on/off signal thus making the term switch not useful. If you buy a HE switch make sure you know which style you are getting.
By measuring contact bounce, you can probably detect the difference between fast and slow presses, but not much more. Maybe three or four levels total