this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
37 points (100.0% liked)

Mechanical Keyboards

8825 readers
1 users here now

Are you addicted to the clicking sounds of your beautiful and impressive mechanical keyboard?
If so, this community is for you!

Here you can discuss everything about mechanical keyboards (and only mechanical keyboards).

Banner by Jay Zhang on Unsplash

founded 4 years ago
 

I want to try split keyboard, but don't know how to choose. I can build it myself. So I'd rather want a cheap one.

top 8 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

It really depends on what you're most comfortable with; when you go for such a custom option most of the design decisions are about personal preferences.

I suggest you draw out some layouts on a piece of paper, adjust them until you feel happy and then plan out how you want the keymap to look. When you're happy, look for a layout that fits what you want or build your own on KiCAD.

I bought a kyria from Splitkb, and I've been very happy with the design. If I needed another keyboard, it would probably be a very similar layout, but have slightly fewer keys, be low-profile and no oleds.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I definitely vote for the Piantor by Beekeeb

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I liked the SplitKB Kyria. But my wrists did not (through no fault of the keyboard - wrist injury).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

My first split was the sofle choc v1.2. I maybe wouldn't recommend it over the v3 now that I've tried both but both are still very good!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I chose to build a Cantor (https://github.com/diepala/cantor) partially because I liked the diodeless design, the thumb cluster that is a bit splayed out and I didn't want to commit to a 3x5 layout like in the cheapino. I pretty happy with it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I started with an Afternoon Breeze (https://www.afternoonlabs.com/breeze/). I have since built a Sofle RGB (https://josefadamcik.github.io/SofleKeyboard/build_guide_rgb.html), with a second Sofle RGB planned to leave at the office.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Lily58 or Solfe. If you want the Corne experience, just remove switches.

Consider something that allows you to do both Choc and MX unless you already have a strong preference. LilyPro can do this.

The extra column also allows for the pinky mod, which is my favorite Miryoku layout (moves the top pinky column outward). Pikachoc has this natively.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Split keyboards are niche enough that the cheapest option I found was building it myself (with pcbs by jclpcb). Ones I looked at are corne, cheapino, lily58, and ferris sweep but I settled on the chocofi and have been loving it

Edit: my goal was to find something "corne-like" as there seems to be good resources for it and I wanted to try the miryoku firmware