TL;DR: This is a ramble about my old and new keyboards, with some finger pain along the way.
- Hotswap has it's drawbacks
- QMK is nice
- I like macro keys
Due to my job and love for gaming, I spend quite a bit of time in front of a keyboard. With that in mind (and also some enabling colleagues) I went on a big long search for the perfect keyboard. Quickly I became interested in split designs and finally pulled the trigger on a Mistel Barocco MD770. It's now 1.5 years later, and this text was not typed on the Mistel.
The old
The Mistel Barocco MD770 is a super nice keyboard. I like the clean look, the split form factor and the fact that I can 'merge' it into a 'normal' keyboard. This saves me from messing with the whole keymap when gaming. What I had to fiddle with however, was the keybinds while not gaming. There is no GUI for that and you have to do it by combinations of key presses. It worked, but I had to check the manual every time I wanted to change something. Also the bluetooth connection often took some time (no issues when wired) to get going. So it had it's minor drawbacks, but not enough for me to go out searching again. After over a year with the board however, an issue pressing enough came up.
The issue
Being a gamer all my life, I never really had issues with hand or finger pain. But getting older and/or really diving into FPS about half a year ago messed with that. After longer gaming sessions I started to notice pain in the fingers of my left hand. Since I also do climbing, it took quite some time for me to figure out, that in fact the gaming is the issue. It seems I press WASD like a mad man when running around. Press less hard then - duhhh! I tried, but the MX Brown switches just didn't give the feedback my fingers needed.
I like climbing, I like gaming and I wanted this fixed quickly. My best idea, apart from tying to press less hard, was to find switches with a clearer feedback. This is when I discovered, that the Mistel sadly does NOT have a hotswap PCB. Which leads us to chapter three.
The new
With virtually endless options for keyboards and some money to throw at the problem, I was not quite ready to desolder my whole keyboard. So I went out there with my requirements figured out:
- split layout that can mesh together (for the reason above)
- hotswap (because that's what made me end up here)
- staggered is fine
- QMK support
- (macro keys)
The rest was mostly a gut decision - I found the Keychron Q11, liked the mostly clean look and the macro keys and just went with it.
With it I ordered some Cherry MX ERGO CLEAR, some cheapish keycaps that at least support this split layout and some O-rings. Most important answer first: Yes it helped with the finger pain! The actuation point is way more recognizable and the O-rings make the bottom out a lot less hard. I love the switches and also the sound is quite nice. The dedicated macro keys including a GUI to set them all up are also a major improvement in my books. I use them for media management and some undo-redo action which is super convenient. The keyboard itself is also quite beefy with its aluminuim body - not a super big deal but it feels nice. Last thing I want to talk about are the hotswap sockets: You just push in your switches and are ready to go - sounds super easy. And it is. Unless you don't have any feeling in your fingers (duhhh again) and just smash them in. I broke some sockets. Nothing that could not be fixed with some solder, but I was not even aware that this is an option. My fault but still something to watch out for at least.