All right, so today we are talking about a different keyboard. This is the glove 80. It is a keyboard with the key well, so when I put my hands in it, there's a little curvature that my hands can follow. And the best way to maybe describe this keyboard is that the typing experience is so comfortable, that all the downsides that I found with this keyboard simply don't matter. I have had some R's I issues for a while. If I put my hand in this thing, life is always good. Like issues don't flare up with this particular keyboard. Now, I want to emphasize, I do think that there are a couple of downsides that I do definitely want to discuss, but the main thing that I just want to have out there as a good summary, the design of this keyboard is just really, really well done. And maybe that's also the place where I want to start. Okay, so as a place to get started, one thing you'll immediately notice when you look at the keyboard, is that it's really meant for me to put my hand in like so. There's like a little key well over here, when my fingers can sort of move up and down. And you can also see that there's like a little thumb cluster. My thumb can sort of move around here and very comfortably hit a lot of these buttons. There's a little bit of a height difference over here, so you can see that there's like three buttons on top, three below. So in theory, you can definitely hit all of these buttons pretty comfortably, but there is this one sort of consequence with the way it's laid out. Because hopefully you can kind of see from this angle over here. You can see that the pinky has these two columns over here. The ring finger has this one, then the middle finger, and then for the index finger, we've got all the keys over here. So for all four of these fingers, there are basically these waves that they can kind of surf. But here's an interesting thing. That also means that if you've got like a bad typing habit, let's say you don't use your pinky as much, and maybe you secretly use your ring finger to maybe hit the cue button over there. Because of the height difference, you're actually kind of blocked from doing that. And that to me has been the greatest forcing function to actually learn how to type properly. It is the weirdest little detail, but simply because I couldn't cheat anymore, I really had to use my ring finger on the ring finger column, and I couldn't use this for anything else. That has also made it a lot easier for me to use other keyboards that have a very similar layout. For the P, in particular, I would always kind of cheat by using my ring finger to go and reach for that, but I don't have to do that on this board. And in fact, this board is also physically teaching me when I'm doing bad habits, which I thought was like a very interesting thing that I didn't expect. It's not just the fact that my hands are very comfortable in it. It is also definitely the case that there's like a little forcing function because of the way that this stuff is laid out. Another thing that I think is maybe good to mention as well, is you can see that if I put my hands in it, you know, the hands are nice and comfy and they can move around, but they can also move down. And you will notice that there are these keys at the bottom over here as well. Those are surprisingly comfortable to hit as well. I did not expect that. And other keyboards that's always been kind of a hit or miss when there's an extra row at the bottom here. These buttons are like really comfortable to press really. So that's kind of cool. You've got extra buttons over here that could also be used for shortcuts that you don't use necessarily that frequently. But it's okay. Space for extra buttons. You don't have to move your hands to the sides anymore. Again, you can really just move your fingers down as well. There is one sort of downside, maybe to the layout. Maybe this is the easiest way to show. If I hold my hand in what I think is a pretty comfortable position, then even when I stretch my finger as far as possible, like the middle finger here is fine, the ring finger here is fine, but just my pointing finger. The index finger can't really reach that seven. So that there might be some adjustment that I got to do to maybe move my hand a bit forward, and maybe that's better. But it also might just be the case that my hand isn't necessarily in the perfect shape. I don't use the numbers that often in general. So I just move my hand to hit that button right there. It's a downside, kind of, but again, the downside doesn't matter because everything else about it is just so dang comfortable. One thing I will also say, and again, this has to do with the fact that maybe I still need to figure out what the best place for my hand is. Even though there are eight buttons over here for your thumb that you could theoretically reach quite comfortably, I do think it's fair to say that the outer most buttons over here do require a bit of a stretch, as you can see. So even though you could reach for them, I don't know if I would put frequently used buttons over there. What I've really ended up doing because it just feels more comfortable is I put my hand down like so, and I just hit the bottom three all the time. That just works for me. I think I could do without the three buttons on top over here. It depends on your layout. I can definitely see myself putting an infrequently used shortcut on top over there, but still, even if I had only two thumb buttons at my disposal, that would have also just totally been fine by me. But there's extra buttons, so that's not necessarily a downside. Now, one thing that I think contributes to comfort over here is if I think about the amount of travel that my finger needs to do, when I'm in such a key well over here, like if I want to move my finger from the K to the I, because it's curved, it's way less distance for me to just move up a little bit like that. If this were flat, you would have to actually kind of lift your finger up a bit and then arch over in order to hit the key on top. But the curve key well also minimizes a bunch of the travel distance, which I think also contributes to the general comfort of just typing in these keys. And I kind of want to give a small demo for that. So I'm just going to turn this guy on. I'm just going to open up some blind text. And what I think I might do is just type for a little bit. Just so you get an impression of what it's like, like you can look at what my hands are doing. So again, I'm using home remote applications, but let's do something like hello. My name is Vincent. This is a nice keyboard. Notice how little my wrists move. Rists move. They barely do a twist. When you look at it in the camera, you should be able to see like my all of that, like left, right hand movement that you might have to do on the roast to hit the energy and stuff. That's all stuff that you can configure away. My hands are really just resting all the time. And my fingers are like barely moving up and down. And that up and down movement is super light. So you can also imagine where the comfort kind of comes from. There's still a little bit of trying to figure out what the best placement is, of course. But just the fact that your hands really need to do less work. I think it's also why it's so nice to type on this thing. And like what you get, what I have noticed when I first picked it up is that this is a relatively lightweight keyboard. And the easiest way to show that is to just show like it is not a heavy bit of gear. So if I were to just do a tick, you know, you are going to see that it just moves around. If I were to contrast that with the keyboard, that's a bit heavier like this one. If I were to apply the same force, it's not going to be moving, but this one will. Now that means that sometimes if you move your hands around a lot for whatever reason or you move like this, you are going to move the keyboard a bit. But the feet are made of rubber. So they're not going to be moving that much. But I do think it's probably one of the lightest keyboards that I've used. Now another thing you'll notice, if you pick it up and if you tap it just a bit on the side, you might hear a little bit of rattle. And that rattle comes from the tenting kit that the base unit offers. So the way you do the tenting is you use these legs and you kind of screw them in and out to make them longer or smaller. And by doing that, you can actually get a little bit of tenting going. So instead of the board being like this, you can kind of move it up a bit like that. That system is a bit fiddly, if I'm perfectly honest. Like you have to twist it a little bit to really figure out what the right height is. You do get some extra screws so you can get like longer ones in there, etc. The system works fine like you can't really tune it to the millimeter. So that's like definitely a design choice that has merit to it. But it's also one of those things where, okay, it's kind of a downside maybe, but the downside doesn't matter because the tenting experience on this thing is just so dang comfortable. I think one of the bigger downsides of this keyboard is the fact that because it's curved, I think they also have a curved PCB in this thing. So it means that you cannot just change the switches. The switches are really soldered in. So when you pick this board, which does cost about $400, you are also going to have to pick the switch that you're going to want to use. They offer four kinds. I went ahead with the lightest one. You can also get them with the tactile or the clicky variance. These are all chalk switches. If you go to the Discord channel, you will find lots and lots of people who have desoldered these boards that put custom switches in. But people have done that with a lot of success. So if that's your thing, good to know. But one thing I think is also fair to mention is that you even have to be a little bit careful when replacing the keycaps. If you want to replace a keycaps, they provide you a wrench. And what they want you to do is hold the wrench on top of the switch, such as your 100% sure the switch does not move as you're pulling out the keycap. And when I say that, it might be surprised initially because it might sound like this is a very fragile device. I think that's not necessarily the case. I think it's more of a consequence of how it's designed. The build quality feels solid to me. It's just that I can imagine that there's a curve PCB in this thing. And if you were to pull ever so slightly the wrong way, that internal bit is quite fragile. And that's why you should just be a little bit careful. Again, it's a downside. Like I really like being able to switch the switches easily. But it's also a downside that I can just really live with because again, the type and comfort of this thing is just amazing. If you want to pay extra, there is also a tenting kit. And there are also some extreme tensing solutions, as you can imagine. What I've seen some people do online is they just installed their own screws and really put like a plate below, such as there's always this pretty heavy tilt. There is still a lot of modification options out there. But I would describe this as a light board. There's not necessarily a heavy keyboard that can really withstand a beating because it's made out of metal. That's not this thing. This thing is just the light keyboard that really feels like it's been designed consciously and that does have the consequence that you also might want to just take care when you're using it. You can't throw this thing around. That's not what it's built for. That said, if you are going to buy this, they do give you a pretty robust carrying case. It has like a pretty solid outer shield, so to say, and you can fit both models in here. They also give you some extra screws and really little tools to help you out, but you do get the carrying case when you buy it, which is definitely welcome if you want to bring this to the office, let's say. One thing that also deserves mentioning is that you can actually run this with Bluetooth. I am not doing that. I prefer to keep it all wired in while possible. But the battery life really does seem to be quite good. I've been using this board for over a month. I have never charged this side before and it has not filled me at all. I could be wrong, but I believe these two devices are communicating with each other over Bluetooth as well. But the battery life is just sort of excellent. There is also some RGB in this and you can use that to show some information about the battery life. I would really prefer it if you could actually use it to do per key RGB, but that's something that's kind of hard to configure with their software. That's not something that is as easy as, let's say, any of the ZSA keyboards. Speaking of that, I figured I might also just show what the configuration software is like. Now, the thing with this configuration software is that it's definitely not the worst, but it's also definitely not the best that I've seen. One thing I do recommend is that if you are interested in doing anything with home-road modifications, then there's lots of starting templates that you can pick. But you probably want to go all the way to the bottom because someone has pre-configured a good home-road solution for you. I had a lot of trouble getting home-road modifications to work on my own, but by using this as the base template, I was able to manage quite well. Then, what you're looking at here is the configuration software. You can make an account at MoErgo, which is the creator of this keyboard. Then you can tell it your layout and all the layouts that you make are saved here, which is definitely a nice little service. But this is the interface that you got. You can check out the different layers. You can click on a place and make some changes. I also think it deserves to be highlighted that the documentation is actually pretty good. You can go to the documentation software and you'll find a good MakeDocs project that has lots of information. I also have good funds up on the docs. Those are actually really, really good. It's just that it's harder to click everything around here. You are going to have to invest a little bit in understanding, let's say, the key codes for the underlying software. This is based on top of something called ZMK if I'm not mistaken, which is an open source Bluetooth SDK. Does it give like a example if I want to have a shortcut over here that is to say if I hit this button over here that I'm then going to have Alt space. Then the way to configure that is to know that you want to have the LA modifier and that's a function that accepts the space key. It's little things like that that do have a bit of learning curve. It's fine because again, you do it because the typing experience is so amazing. So you can manage the learning curve over there. But just to give you an impression of what it's actually like to make a change, what I figured I might do is I might scroll down a bit. I hit this clone to edit button. And when I do that, I can actually make some changes. So let's just change this button on the top over there and let's put a keyboard shortcut in there. So let's do something like command space that's my Alfred shortcut. Then I want to have the left gooey, which is short for LG. I want to have that modifier function, not the key press, but I hit that. And if you have a look, it feels like there's a function that's being configured here, but the input is still missing. So I can hit that and then I can look for space. And there you go. I now have a keyboard shortcut configured for the upper right hand corner of the keyboard. That's a small change. But if I were to scroll down now, what I can do is I can say save and build firmware. This takes a while, but at some point it's going to be done downloading. And once it is, then I should be able to flash the keyboard. OK, so that's not done. I just downloaded this file over here. And for the next step, what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn off the power for both devices. There's a little power button at the back over here. So I'm going to turn this one off. I'm going to turn this one off. Then I'm going to put this device in sort of reset mode, which is the button down below here and E. While I keep that pressed. And while this board is plugged into power, I turn it back on. And when I now open up a new finer window, then you can see that there's this new device that just appeared. And the thing you got to do now is take that file you just downloaded, click and drag that over here. And then sort of automatically that finer window will close. I can turn this other side back on again. And what I can now also do is I should be able to hit this button. Oh, and it's on the other screen, unfortunately. So it's OK. You're going to have to trust me on this one. I've two screens on one screen. The other thing is popping up. So like this change is definitely something that happened. But the main thing that's important is that you see the flashing procedure. So with some of the other software, you might be used to just having to click a button and then your device is flashed. There are extra steps involved here. It's fine. It's not the worst. It's just another sign that this software isn't necessarily the strongest part of this keyboard. But it also serves as a reminder that that's OK. The reason you go for this keyboard is because of the typing comfort. And they are making changes to the software. They're making improvements. And definitely it's not like something it's stuck in time or anything like that. Like you can check the discord. There are improvements. But if you really want to customize this thing, there is a bit of a learning curve. There are also some other open source solutions that you can use to maybe flash this device, but it's a slight rabbit hole. I just wanted to show you what it can be like to configure this thing. One thing that I do think is also fair to mention as another downside. I have not gotten mouse movement to work well on this board yet. Some of the other keyboards have pretty good support that I can control the mouse using the keyboard. I have not really been able to figure that out on this board. One thing I will say is that you can pretty comfortably put a trackpad in the middle over here. And the keyboard is actually not super high or anything from the desk. So moving back down to the mousepad over here is just totally fine. It just would have been preferable if I could also do mouse movement on the keyboard. There's also some other like I would argue maybe minor downsides that I think are fair to mention. If you have a look at the keyboard over here, you will notice that the home row, like the J button for example, you would kind of expect there to be a nib on that keycap. There isn't. And it is again kind of fine because you just put your hand in the resting position and then you know what keys to press. It just would have been like slightly more preferable if there was just a keycap in there that had a home button for me. But again, it's fine. And it's like this is the continuous feeling that I have with this keyboard. I'm sure it will have improvements and it definitely will. I've seen some of the stuff that the community does and that is like really, really awesome. But it is a keyboard that has a couple of these like downsides that I can look at and I can appreciate that they're downsides. But I am also able to just not care for a simple reason that the typing experience is just that good. It is just so damn comfortable. And for the life of me, I have had the situation where my RSI symptoms kind of went away and then I used a normal keyboard like this. And then it came back the RSI issues never came back on this board and that on its own is a feat. Like if you are really struggling with RSI, I only keyboards that I've got. This is the thing I would really like go see a doctor in the professional, of course. But like this is the keyboard I would recommend. The final thing that I do maybe want to say is that I do think that in exploring my RSI issues and like comparing keyboards. Keyboards have kind of become a hobby of mine now. So I can see myself rotating these keyboards around. I do find that to be somewhat enjoyable. I do like to think that every keyboard sort of forces me to rethink the keymaps and all that. And I do think that that's just super enjoyable. So while I can imagine I will also be using other boards besides this one. I cannot imagine that this board would ever leave my rotation of keyboards because it's just so dang comfortable to type on. Sure, the board has some downsides, but they don't matter.