Keyboards: Desktop, Portable, Mechanical and More

Keyboards: Desktop, Portable, Mechanical and More

An entry in the Essentials Series.

The keyboard. The modern writer's chisel, paintbrush, lens. It used to hammer ink onto a piece of paper like a piano key hammers a string. Direct response—a physical, mechanical operation.

Now, it… what does it do? Senses our touch, translates a binary signal into the shape of a letter (or the movement of a cursor or the scroll of a page).

It's an unavoidable tool for a writer, sometimes a pleasure and sometimes a plague.

It's essential.

Because it's essential, it's many writers' most desired, dissected, tested and tweaked tool—our hardware obsession. In that spirit, we now embark on an indulgent exploration of the world of keyboards.

Your Keyboards

Do you like your keyboard? Did you buy it or did it come with your computer?

My computer is an iPad and, thus, didn't come with one. I had to choose one from the very beginning. Consequently, I'm more interested in keyboards than I otherwise would be.

I consider 2 keyboards to be the minimum for my situation: one for desk use, where the iPad is in a stand, and one for everywhere else—travel, the cafe, the yard, balcony, kitchen, couch, etc.

For writers who use laptops or desktops, the number of keyboards per capita is either < 3 or > 5.

Is that a fact?

Oh yes.

If you're not a keyboard person (yet), you have one or two keyboards. You have the keyboard your computer came with (#1) and you might have another one if you're using a laptop in a stand (#2).

If your number of computers is greater than two, you are either a bad shopper or a keyboard person (the two are not mutually exclusive). If you are the latter and you own less than five keyboards, I can assure you this is temporary.

Your keyboard inventory is best represented by a variable because it so frequently changes, usually in the positive direction.

On a graph, it looks something like this:

/UWG assets/chart-number-of-keyboards-over-time.jpg "Keyboard Accumulation Over Time. (2020) Virtual ink on virtual paper."

This is as inevitable as the photographer's pursuit of the best lens or the guitarist's obsession with the spectrum of guitars and pedals.

It's in your blood like the wolf is in the dog.

My Keyboards: A Growing Inventory

I write almost everything on an iPad Pro from 2018. At my desk, the iPad sits near eye level, atop a stack of novels. On my lap (and just about everywhere else) it's enclosed by a keyboard cover.

Different setups are great—they can help with context switching and inspire creativity. I love switching up my working position throughout the day and using an iPad with multiple keyboards allows me the greatest flexibility.

If you've ever watched Top Gear, you'll recall the part of the celebrity segment when Clarkson grills the star about their car history. "Your first car was a ----?" he'd exclaim, aghast, or, "Now this one's a real petrol-head." Something like that.

All in good fun.

With that in mind, I'm going to share my keyboard history. The connoisseurs will scoff, those on the fence will take notes and the non-keyboard-people will say things like "But aren't these two basically the same thing?"

Enjoy.

Keyboard #1: K380 at the Desk

At my "official" work setup—a skinny glass Ikea desk with keyboard, trackpad and stack-of-books iPad stand—I type on a Logitech K380. It's a small keyboard, slightly narrower than full-width. Also, it has incredibly strange round keys.

/UWG assets/logitech-k380-bluetooth-keyboard.jpg "You can quickly switch between 3 connected devices. Source: Logitech"

Keystrokes are punchy and springy. It's fun to type on if not always comfortable. The half-inch or so of difference between the width of my MacBook Pro's keyboard and the K380 puts a noticeable strain on my wrists after a few hours of typing.

One perk is its ability to remember up to 3 devices and switch between them by pressing the F1 through F3 keys. That lets me use it with my laptop when that's in a stand on my desk, too. It's also nice to have the media keys along the top.

However… the keyboard goes much too far by printing both "Cmd" and "Alt" on the Command key. I know, I know, but it's unfortunate. Oh, and it uses AAA batteries (which, admittedly, last forever, but still…).

It's a good keyboard and cheap but not a great one. I wish its keys were larger. And square.

Keyboard #2: Magic Keyboard On the Go

Traveling setups are the most fun for me. Lots of people post pictures and film "tours" of their desks, offices, writing caves, etc. I enjoy carefully optimizing (and constantly tweaking) my travel setup.

Thus, my on-the-go keyboards do and will always exceed my desk keyboards.

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro 12.9" is the most expensive and best keyboard I own… which is strange because it's technically a folding iPad cover, it's wrapped in a weird rubbery material and it's incompatible with all other devices.

/UWG assets/magic-keyboard-ipad.jpeg "The Magic Keyboard for iPad floats."

But it's so good. If you use an iPad and you're a writer, it's likely everything you've ever wanted. It's a magnificent, full-keyboard typing experience. It's backlit and provides a wonderful blend of key travel and thinness. Its keys are big, square and stable. Like the trackpad below them, you can press anywhere—middle, corner, side—and feel the same great response.

The Magic Keyboard is solid on my lap and comfortable on a desk. (I'll test it on a café table as soon as I can!)

Despite being thin, the Magic Keyboard for iPad is heavy—as heavy as you'd expect if you've ever used a Brydge keyboard (see below). It's worth it, though. It's magnificently sturdy and a joy to type on. The trackpad's a super bonus.

If you don't do the majority of your writing on an iPad, $350 probably seems like an outrageous sum of money to pay for this type of accessory (honestly, it still hurts to think about it). But if you're like me, you've been quietly saving money for years for precisely this day. It's the dream, fulfilled.

The Used Pile: Other Keyboards I've Tried

Another number that will always exceed the number of keyboards I own: the number of keyboards I've tried.

/UWG assets/chart-keyboards-owned-tried.jpg "A keyboard returned is a lesson learned."

Brydge Pro 12.9": Well-Built… Maybe Too Well Built

I'm extremely fond of my Brydge Pro keyboard. I wrote a novel on it. I did almost all of my writing work on it for the better part of a year. I built my personal website on it. Now, it's been replaced by the Magic Keyboard. But I haven't retired it.

Now, I use the Brydge as a desktop keyboard when my fingers tire of the Logitech's round keys. It still has a job, at least until I buy a real desktop keyboard.

The typing experience is good if you're fine with most laptop keyboards. It's not quite MacBook-level (and, therefore, not quite Magic-Keyboard-level) but it holds up well against other iPad keyboards. The keys could be bouncier—they require some force—but they're backlit and nicely spaced.

The main benefit of the Brydge Pro is still unmatched by the Magic Keyboard: it recreates the standard laptop form factor.

The problem is, to achieve this clamshell form factor, Brydge has to use death-grip metal clasps and unnervingly-stiff hinges. Attaching and removing the keyboard from the iPad (or, rather the iPad from the keyboard) is scary and uncomfortable. Removing it means tearing it out of the rubber-covered metal clasps. Attaching it means shoving it in one corner at a time and praying you don't twist the iPad in the process.

Every time, I worried I'd bend the device and damage the screen. Out of fear, I either left my iPad attached for weeks at a time or felt reluctant to put it back in after I'd removed it. That's not the experience I want.

Honorable Mentions: Smart Keyboard Folio, 10.5" and 12.9"

For a while, I used a 10.5" iPad Pro, to which I attached Apple's Smart Keyboard, an origami-like contraption which I still love. Many despised the way it wasn't uniformly thin. Others thought it was floppy and contrived or wished it covered the back of the iPad.

I thought the awkwardness was a perfect trade-off for its versatility—it could flip around behind the iPad and, magically, become an invisible stand.

But in terms of the writing experience, it… isn't great.

It's small, has very little key travel and, yes, is a bit floppy in the lap. But it's also waterproof, dust-proof, crumb-proof and grease-proof. It's covered in the same magical fabric as the more modern Smart Keyboard Folios. Apple's newer, larger keyboard covers are sturdier and better for typing.

The virtue of these keyboard-covers remains their resiliency and the careless versatility they enable. I can write in the kitchen, on the patio, on the beach!

Sand gets virtually everywhere except inside of an iPad Smart Keyboard.

There's that context switching again. If writing, for you, is about being out in the world as you write, these keyboards might grant you your dream setup.

Mechanical Keyboards

Coming soon… (Very.)

In the meantime, dive in.

Ergonomic Keyboards

The keyboards that break all of the rules. At this point, I have no first-hand experience with any of these but they fascinate me. Some are mechanical, some aren't. Some are curved and bent like a MoMA sculpture. Some are split in half.

The world of ergonomic keyboards is a world that frightens me with too many options, too many variables to consider. The only way I can see myself venturing into this world and retaining any amount of productivity and money as a writer is by becoming an ergonomic keyboard reviewer. I'd have no time for anything else.

Therefore, to avoid the health and financial risks associated with this venture, I will simply point you to some existing research done by actual ergonomic keyboard reviewers.

The Best Ergonomic Keyboard… Reviews

1. Wirecutter (Updated January 2020)
2. Lifewire (Updated January 2020)
3. Digital Trends (Updated April 2020)

Bonus: Typing Practice and a Way to Test Your New Keyboard

Want a fun way to test your new keyboard and simultaneously practice your touch typing skills?

Keybr.com is a beautiful, lightning-fast online game of sorts that presents a series of "paragraphs", each of which focuses on one alphabetical key. It uses algorithms to measure your strengths and weaknesses and adjusts the blocks of tests to help you improve.

It's very cool and pretty quickly shows you your own typing weaknesses. You'll also start to notice the quirks and benefits of the keyboard you're using, which makes it a great testing tool.

Challenge

After just under 9 minutes playing with the tool, my stats are:

Try it out! You might be surprised by just how fast you can type. And, if you're like me, you'll start to feel all of the places where autocorrect saves your butt.

The Best Keyboard

A writer sits under a tree, drawing ink onto a textured piece of paper.

A writer sits at a table, hammering words onto a page with a typewriter.

A writer stands at a desk, manipulating a keyboard that beams pixels onto a screen.

The end product is the same but the dance is different. We love dissecting the details of the process. The essential keyboard is nothing less than an extension of our very hands. With that importance comes the impossible quest for the perfect keyboard and all of the distracting, fun, obsessive tinkering and testing along the way.

P.S. I'll update this inventory as I try new keyboards, which is inevitable.