The last few months have been a pain for me. And I don’t mean “oh it’s been busy” (well, it has been busy), but literally a pain. Long-time readers of my blog might know that periodically I have flare-ups of one form or another of RSI, and since a week or so before Christmas 2024, I’ve been dealing with such an event – lasting much longer than normal for me.
This has been a different kind of flare up for me, as it’s centred in the radial nerves in both arms – initially mostly the right arm, but over time the worst of the flare-up sat in my left arm, and mainly in the upper arm. (As someone used to RSI pain over 25+ years of it, the pain levels at times have been quite shocking even to me – to the point of frequent nights of just 3 or so hours sleep as a result of the discomfort, despite a variety of pain relief medications.)
When I first developed RSI in the late 90s, I stumbled across Kinesis Ergonomic keyboards and they’ve been a regular companion in my working life. My first Kinesis Ergo keyboard wasn’t bluetooth, as you’d imagine; it wasn’t wireless via a dongle. It wasn’t USB. It wasn’t PS/2; it was a 5-pin din connector. That’s how long I’ve been using them.
I have … strong opinions on ergonomic keyboards based on what works for me and what doesn’t. From my perspective, the Kinesis keyboards I fall back to whenever I have a major RSI flare-up work for the following reasons:
- By having the two halves of the keyboard spread further apart, the aim is to keep your arms in a more natural L shape coming from your body
- The primary key section on both sides of the keyboard is shaped into a concave bowl-shape; unlike a normal keyboard where you have to stretch your fingers forward and up from the home keys to reach half the keyboard, this shape is all about having you keep your fingers in more natural movements
- Your thumbs contribute more to your typing, spreading the load out further – for me at least on a conventional keyboard my thumbs don’t do much other than hitting the space and Windows/Alt/Command keys.
Up until recently, my go-to RSI keyboard was a more conventional wired Kinesis keyboard with both sides of keyboard joined at a fixed length – great if you’re of a slim build I’m sure, but there’s always been a part of the Kinesis shape that’s not been 100% great for my … ahem … larger build.
When it became clear a month or so ago that my current flare-up was not going away in a more regular time-frame, I decided it was time to start digging into every option I could think of. That even included finally giving in and transitioning to a track-ball instead of a mouse – not something I ever wanted to find myself doing, but I must say it’s not been a terrible experience thus far.
And then I decided it was time to update my Kinesis from the fixed-width design to a true split design – and get a Kinesis that finally included Bluetooth.
I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and that seems like as good a time as any to talk about how I’m finding it.
Now, upfront, the disclaimer: I’m neither formally trained in ergonomics nor medicine. I’m not in any way trying to give medical advice with this blog post, so keep in mind everything I’m going to talk about is from my personal perspective.
Build Quality
This has been somewhat of a joy. If there’s any criticism I’ve had of Kinesis over the past 27 years of periodic product purchases, it’s that every single keyboard in the past that I’ve bought from them has had a distinctly plastic feeling to them. They’ve been OK to type on (otherwise that would make them a bit pointless, obviously), but I’ve never felt that Kinesis actually cared that much about build quality from any other perspective. Which is rather ironic given the high cost that has always been associated with a Kinesis keyboard.
For this keyboard at last, build quality is not a concern. The keyboard – both halves of the keyboard – feel solid. Truly solid. Like, if someone were breaking into my house and I was bereft of a brick to defend myself with, I’d consider grabbing one half of the keyboard. Well, actually I wouldn’t, but you’ll understand why when I get to the price below.
Unlike every other Kinesis keyboard I’ve ever owned, this has high build quality to it. The keys feel strong, the enclosure feels strong, and partly due to the metal stands on both halves to allow different levels of position to the keyboard, it has some real, pleasing tactile weight to it, too.
The keys are mechanical with brown switches, so they have good responsiveness, good feedback and a pleasing but not annoyingly loud click to them. (Unless you ask my husband, who detests the noise of any mechanical keyboard.) Seriously though, compared to other mechanical keyboards I’ve owned over the years, it’s not a loud typing experience at all.
A distinct feeling of modernity
I’ve become so used to wireless/bluetooth keyboards that when my RSI flare-up became strong enough I felt compelled to haul my prior Kinesis keyboard out of storage, the incongruity of having to use a USB connection to my computer was really frustrating. The classic single-chassis Advantage keyboards from Kinesis are big and bulky, and since I hand-write a lot of notes at my desk, I found myself constantly struggling to find where to move the tethered monstrosity so that I could get a notepad in position to write on. The full spit with distinct halves that can be connected via bluetooth allows me to more conveniently just move part of the keyboard completely out of the way without wrestling like some pseudo-surreal WWF fighter with a corded beast.
Additionally, it has a backlight. Again, something we take for granted in most keyboards these days, but not something I’ve ever had from the Kinesis product family. It’s amazing how much more convenient I find spotting what I’m doing when I first rest my hands on the keyboard if there’s a backlight available to me.
Battery life when operating in Bluetooth mode isn’t too bad. I had been thinking of writing this review a week ago at the one-week mark and honestly I was going to bemoan a very poor battery life. Kinesis say you’ll get around 2 weeks out of the keyboard with average use and no backlight, and in that first week I was getting a maximum of about 2 days. But then I dialled the backlight to the minimum rather than maximum setting and after the last charge it lasted a full week. (It would have lasted longer but I wanted to type this review up on a laptop it’s not normally used with, and rather than re-pair the bluetooth connection, I decided to just do it via USB instead.)
On the USB subject – it comes with USB-C connections on both halves of the keyboard. The USB cables supplied are reasonably lengthy but are both USB-A at their other ends; there’s also very strong notes throughout the manual and box stating that you must not, under any circumstances, charge the keyboard halves any other way than via a computer – so I suspect it’s not too good with higher voltage chargers. (That’s certainly not something I’m going to test out, as you’ll see below.)
A space apart
By being two entirely physically separate halves, I can finally space the keyboard in such a way that suits my larger body size.
The previous single-chassis Advantage 2 model I’d used had essentially the same size I’d always observed, which saw about an 18cm split between both sides of the keyboard, measured edge-key to edge-key on both sides. This was always the source of a cramped feeling for me, where I’d be tucking my arms in tight to the side of the body in a not entirely natural feeling.
With two distinct halves I can now liberate my arms and position them in a far more natural posture – the ideal position for me sees an edge-to-edge gap on the keyboard halves of 26 cm, and if you measure from the actual letter keys, the ‘t’ and the ‘y’ key are actually about 38cm distant from one another.
Room. To. Move. I cannot stress how good that feels. It’s truly the most comfortable typing experience I’ve ever had.
Open your wallet. Wide.
You can’t have a conversation about a Kinesis keyboard without discussing the cost. When I purchased the Advantage2 model about 6 or 7 years ago, it cost me upwards of $700 AU once the exchange rate and international shipping was added into the equation. While the memory is vague, I’m certain that the very first Advantage style keyboard – back when it was called an Ergo – I purchased, back in the 90s, was well in excess of $350 AU.
This time around, Kinesis no longer ship internationally and I found myself having to buy from a reseller in Australia. Including a modest (by comparison) $19.95 shipping, my bank account was down $1048.95 by the time the keyboard was handed over to me by a courier. I’ve seen gamers excitedly talk about how their top-of-the-line mechanical keyboard cost them several hundred dollars. If you want an expensive keyboard, deep dive into the world of true ergonomic beasties.
(And that’s why, despite the weight, I wouldn’t grab either half of the keyboard if someone were breaking in and I was looking for something brick-like to defend myself with.)
It’s a lot of money to spend on a keyboard. A lot more money than I would personally like to spend on a keyboard, but the decision basically came down to choosing between continuing to work or take a six-month unpaid sabbatical. When it’s a choice between no-income or maintaining your income, that high price doesn’t seem like all that high a price by comparison. But it’s not a decision you make lightly.
If this had been my first Kinesis keyboard purchase decision, there’s no way I would have been willing to fork out that sort of money for a keyboard. Being my fourth, I had a lot trust in the benefit I get, but even so, I agonised over the decision for a couple of weeks before physical agony made the decision for me.
Typing speed
On a regular keyboard, I can usually hit a speed of around 130 words per minute. Not the fastest typer in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but no slouch, either. Whenever I switch back to a Kinesis keyboard, it usually takes me a day to have muscle memory reassert itself, and there my typing speed will typically sit at around 80% or so of my peak. I’d say I’m fairly comfortably sitting at a similar speed with this true split version of the keyboard, so I’m satisfied that it’s not slowing me down too much.
Where’s the caps lock?
With this version of the Advantage, Kinesis have finally introduced full-size Fn keys plus modifier keys on the actual keyboard itself. (Previous versions would have at best a Fn-like key tucked away in rubberised keys at the top of the keyboard.) But that’s caused Kinesis to move around a whole bunch of keys.
The Fn keys have taken the place of regular shift keys on both sides of the keyboard, moving the shift keys up a layer; this left me regularly hitting the Fn key when I meant to hit the shift key for the first 3 or 4 days, and I do sometimes struggle to find Escape, even though it’s now in a prime position. (As a vi user, I like Escape.) But oddest of the key placement choices is the Caps lock key, which now sits under the ‘x’ key:
I will admit to feeling rather silly and frustrated that while I was in a meeting in the first week of using the keyboard, I accidentally hit caps lock and I couldn’t see where it was. (In my defence, it was 04.00am and I’d only had a single coffee.) Since I was typing notes at the time, I found myself having to hold down the shift key for a few minutes as I was typing to avoid all my notes being VERY SHOUTY until I finally spotted the key.
Not all change is good. I do not appreciate keys like Caps lock being moved.
But is it helping?
I decided to step up from the single-chassis Advantage2 to the Advantage 360 Pro on the basis that being able to keep my arms at a far more natural width, rather than tucked into my body, would probably bring a 10% improvement to my recovery time. (And yes, that’s a lot of money to spend for a 10% boost.)
It’s not a miracle – I’m still having to take a variety of painkillers every night in order to get to around 6 hours of sleep. I’d be lying if I said that a couple of weeks with the keyboard has meant that I’m fully back to normal. I suspect in fact that I’ll be many, many months before I’m even approaching normal.
But it does make a difference. With my work days stretching over so many different timezones, it’s quite common for me to do 2 or 3 days each week where my first meeting starts at 3am and my last finishes at 6pm – and there might be as many as 14 meetings in those days. Most of the time for me if I’m not speaking in a meeting, I’m typing notes, so I do spend a lot of time on the keyboard. And while there’s still discomfort at the end of the day, there’s been less discomfort. I’ll take that as a win.
So yes, ultimately, I think the keyboard has been worth the somewhat eye-watering price-tag. Much as it might pain me to say that, it would pain me more without it, and that’s what it’s all about when you’re living with a chronic, long-term injury.