Rec for portable alternative to ZSA Moonlander (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by Copernican@lemmy.world to c/ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world

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My first ergo mech keyboard was a ZSA Moonlander which I got a little over a year ago. I love it. However, I am now being asked to come into the office more often and am looking at getting something similar, but more portable.

I was looking at the ZSA Voyager since the split keeb, low profile form factor, and columnar layout seem to check a lot of boxes, but I can't tell if I can go cut out that many keys/rows. Mostly concerned about losing the bottom row where I often hit CTRL, and losing out on the 3 thumbcluster buttons I always use.

Questions I have are:

Is it easy to switch from keyboard layouts that have dedicated ctrl keys, vs long pressing?
If this is used for an office setup where the keyboard is going to basically be straddling my laptop keyboard, do folks often just dance between the split keyboard to the laptop keyboard for those extra keys or muscle memory chords?
Are there low profile split type keyboards I should be considering?
If I like U4Ts, what type of switches should I be looking at for low profile tactiles but not too thocky and loud?

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[-] YellowAfterlife@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

If the keyboard would be sitting on your office desk anyway, you could get yourself an Ergodox/Redox/ErgoDash and not worry about shedding keys for sake of portability.

[-] markstos@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

I agree. Getting a second keyboard to leave at the office is ideal. A second Moonlander would eliminate any context-switching cost, but if that's too pricey, the layout of the Ergodox is very similar and also supported for ZSA's tools. You can likely find a reasonably priced Ergodox used.

For a while, I had an Ergodox at home and one at work myself. Later, I switched to a Corne and then due to the pandemic, my work became 100% remote.

this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024

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