I love the Susuwatari key caps!
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Mechanical Keyboards
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The Atreus keyboard by Keyboardio with Susuwatari key caps made by Drop.com.
This is my current daily driver as a full time developer. I was happy with the default setup but had to switch a few things around due to using Colemak-DH layout. Some of the thumb keys had to be placed upside down due to the MT3 profile being angled too extreme for comfort with this layout. The original keyboard came with XDA profile keycaps. I’ll be returning to the original keycaps once I finish building a different split ergo keyboard.
How do you get yourself to learn a new keyboard format after years of typing with qwerty?
I've looked at some of these alternate options and i can see how they'd be efficient, but like, i can't see myself unlearning qwerty after decades of typing every day.
For me, it only took me about three months to get to about 70wpm on this layout.
My motivation was a bit different than just learning it for ergonomics though. I never learned how to touch type on qwerty. I use this janky peck typing style with only my index and middle fingers, with my thumb for space and pinky for shift and ctrl.
I discovered the split ergo community after a bit of a dive into the mech keyboard world. I knew that split keyboards wouldn’t work for my typing style so I needed to learn how to touch type. I figured, well, might as well learn an alternative layout at the same time.
Learning an alternative layout is mostly just for the feels. The consensus seems to be that you don’t really type faster on colemak or whatever vs qwerty. Some people do. YMMV. If you’re interested, you should just try it out and see how it feels! No harm no foul
Ahhh, okay, that makes sense. I can see where there might be demand for a more efficient layout as you're getting away from looking and poking. Probably a lot easier to get there if you don't have a couple decades and some change of qwerty typing taking up brain space.
Looks so clean, even with the upside down caps, thanks for sharing.
I'm in the hunt for a small footprint split ergo keyboard, so your post really caught my eye. The staggered columns are really attractive to me.
How long have you been using this? Have you tried any other split ergos, and if so how does this one stack up? Thanks in advance! :)
Heheh
As usual, the keyboard you choose will depend on your use case and personal preference of feel.
I’ve used a Ferris Sweep and a Corne. The Ferris sweep had too little keys in my opinion. I didn’t like bouncing between multiple layers to get to symbols and numbers and function keys. I found that i was getting lost in between layers often and the mental overhead was just uncomfortable to me. Some people swear by 34 keys. Just not for me.
I liked the Corne much better. The extra column meant I could bind those to common modifier keys like ctrl, alt, and super/windows, as well as have a dedicated escape, tab, and del. The extra thumbs meant I could have shift, backspace, space, and two layer keys.
As I was using the Corne more I decided that I didn’t like having two layer keys since I was accidentally pressing the incorrect layer key for what I wanted. My brain had this urge to only want to use one layer key to access symbols and numbers. I also couldn’t get a comfortable position for the arrow keys around the symbols and numbers. I had just ever so slightly too few keys.
So then I tried out this one, the Atreus. It’s similar to the Corne but features a couple more keys, which allows for more common symbols to placed on the default layer. This gave me room for arrow keys on the second layer as well as the numbers and other symbols. Now, I only need one layer key to access most of what I need for my development work.
My only issue currently with this keyboard is that, at least how I have mine currently setup, the ; key is on the bottom most row where the down arrow in the picture is. I find that my muscle memory isn’t quite there and I often hit adjacent keys when trying to hit the semicolon. But I imagine that will smooth out once I use this more. I also notice that my right wrist isn’t all that happy. It wasn’t happy before typing on a standard keyboard. This Atreus isn’t fully split so I can’t angle it exactly how I want it for ergonomics.
That being said I’ve been typing on the Atreus for about three weeks now and I can say that so far this is my favorite layout. It has just the right amount of keys for me. I’m going to experiment with another split keyboard that similar number of keys on each side, but fully split. I haven’t decided yet what that will be.
Thanks so much for the detailed reply.
I'll be checking out the Ferris Sweep for sure. I already looked at the Corne and I'm leaning against it b/c of the extra columns. I think I'd prefer something that doesn't have me stretching my little finger out, or re-locating my entire hand... the Atreus layout looks like it would keep those movements to a minimum...
Good to know your thoughts about it not being fully split. I'm daily driving the bog standard Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard right now, so the unibody doesn't bother me. From what I can tell the split angles are similar between the Atreus and MS. So I think that will be OK for me.
I hope you can find a full split that ticks your other boxes! I've found a few in the past couple days, probably the most compelling to me is the bgkeeb... if it had a few more keys and was hot-swappable I might go for it. But I don't have time to tinker much anymore, and I don't know what use I'd have for the rotary encoders.
Thanks again.