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Analogue controls are indeed an awesome concept for a keyboard. Has anyone shipped any "revolutionary" default setups, e.g., from tiny things like making your pinky suffer less by having lower actuation point to making shallow actuation type lowercase and deeper actuation type uppercase or longer holds on arrow keys accelerating the movement?

Pity, though, the progress is still stalled on the actual layout - the ergonomic splits and other improvements are still a tiny niche

For anyone wondering, this is the keyboard in the image at the top of the article: https://nuphy.com/collections/he-keyboards/products/nuphy-fi...

I was intrigued by the design so I wanted to share.

I tried reading this article with genuine interest but the page crashed for me on iOS :(

This seems to be happening more often in the back half of 2024. IGN crashes nearly every page view for me these days.

Many of the reasons for wanting a hall-effect keyboard are reasons I wouldn't want one, others I find no value in. I feel like the only people who would enjoy a hall effect keyboard are people using the tactile-less cherry red switches, which is only small fraction of keyboard users

If the tactile feedback both existed and was adjustable, and didn't cost more than like 5-10% over a mechanical switch, it might take off more. But for now as neat as it is, it feels extremely niche. If someone wants different activation pressures and distances, they can buy different mechanical switches and would be missing out on basically nothing.

I recently decided to upgrade my 10+ year old Corsair mechanical keyboard, and learned about these fancy magnetic ones. I ended up getting a Wooting Two HE and I love it. It definitely feels like a generational leap and I doubt I'll go back to mechanical.

I'm not a competitive gamer, but being able to have so much control over the key activation is cooler than I expected. Also, having analog WASD movement in a first person game is super intuitive. Unfortunately, a lot of games don't support it because they try to be smart and switch between "gamepad mode" and "keyboard mode", not letting you use both at once. So you gotta do some research to find compatible ones (Half Life 2 works mostly, but climbing ladders is buggy)

Also, even though I'm generally a fan of Corsair, I decided to not buy their magnetic keyboard even though it would've been an obvious progression from my previous one (which was excellent for over a decade). Why? Because Corsair's iCUE software sucks, and Wooting's is not only way better, it also officially supports Linux via an AppImage!

I learned about this on Optimum Tech on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feny5bs2JCg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxEa7k8j1Ro

I bought a magnetic keyboard recommended on HN back in 2019. I was underwhelmed by it. Mostly because it was the Keystone and is still listed as "under production" on Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lekashman/keystone-the-... . I still hold out on hope that one day, it will magically arrive.

How do these Hall Effect switch based keyboards prevent spurious clicks when a non-key -based magnetic field comes near?

Could I bring my neo magnets nearmy coworker and trigger keys?

Are there are that are compatible magnetic switches that one could use as a drop in replacement?

There is (or was?) a Dutch keyboard maker called Wooting who has been offering alternative switches like optical and hall effect switches for a few years. I owned their Wooting One TKL and it was really nice. They always had issues with availability, and AFAIK they never offered a 70% HE keyboard, so I ended up with a Keychron with yellow mechanical switches. I still think those optical or HE switches are the best, and it was a bit sad to see that small Dutch company not getting their products out of the door.

Edit: Thanks for the corrections in the comments below.

Any review with referral links is not worth the electrons used to show it on your screen.

An ergonomic keyboard with good tactile feedback would be my holy grail. If someone knows of a good one, please send it my way.

Love the promotion of cheating features in gaming devices! /sarcasm

Omg to hell with that ad-infested site

I've never heard the term "magnetic keyboard" before. They're called hall-effect keyboards...

For those not in the know, hall-effect key switches can tell the analog position of each key, rather than only whether it's pressed or not as in traditional key switches.

This reminds me of that 3d printed magnetic ergo keyboard I see now and then, Svalboard I think?

idk, I don't have a 3d printer, but if I did, I'd probably give it a try.

I hope the volume scroll could be used as mouse scroll.

I just don't get the obsession with eliminating the numpad. There are tons of interesting looking and innovative keyboards now and they all insist on making them as cramped as possible.

It makes sense on a laptop. But, if I already need to have a clear place on my desk for the keyboard and mouse, I'd rather just use an extra 2 inches to have the full size keyboard with the numpad and arrow keys that are not crammed against the rest of the keyboard.

Would love to have a ergonomic hall effect keyboard!

I daily drive the Moonlander, both for work and gaming, and it's honestly really good. Would be awesome to get a similar keyboard but with magnetic keys.

We'll see. As of the latest testing, mechanicals still show the best single-key latency performance.

I got an ROG Azoth awhile back for that reason.

Would be nice to see how far they can push the technology though!

Given that the time to physically press the key down is a part of the latency, Hall Effect could easily beat out Mechanical in the long run. After all, you can make it almost arbitrarily sensitive.

EDIT: Looks like wired mechanicals at the top end are tied (0.8ms) with the best Halls (0.8ms) and a bit better than the best wireless 2.4Ghz (1.7ms). Mea culpa. We still need more test data on Halls in general though. Removed my comment about Wireless being better - though generally wireless 2.4 GHz beats out all but the top-end wired keyboards.

If you aren't a gamer is a keyboard with this tech worth looking at?

Does anyone have experience if these provide tactile feedback?

There’s lots of discussion about the actuation point, but is there a “click” feel?

I’ve had a lot of wrist strain issues over the last 20 years. I tried many “ergonomic” keyboard layouts, but ultimately switching to a standard ikcb CD108 with Cherry MX brown fixed my issue. The click stops me from mashing the keys too hard, which seems to be the primary root cause (for me).

Reading this brought something to my mind that I had not yet considered. With the rise in popularity of esports, we're getting to a strange place where there is very professional gear for playing games, that is specifically suited to the high intensity, quick reactions of professional athlete. Whether you think that is an appropriate term is not an issue, people are getting paid for this and they play at a much different level that most of us plebes do.

But then you have people who play casually--and let me be clear here, even if you are very good and only play ranked competitive matches, if it's not your job, you're who I'm talking about--who get this same gear. They deck themselves out like the pros for what is, essentially, a hobby. Is that weird? I don't know. People who head out to the local basketball court typically go with only a Spalding they bought at Walmart. Folks who play a little footy on the weekends might buy shin guards, but otherwise just head out to a field.

I don't know where I'm really going with all this, it just seems odd that a person would say one should buy a keyboard that allows for 1mm actuation, when the vast, vast majority of game players wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.