Review Kinesis Advantage360 Review: Niche, Comfy Keys with a Steep Learning Curve

[Admin]

The Kinesis Advantage360 is a keyboard with a very particular audience in mind: programmers, typists, and enthusiasts that want to protect their wrists. It’s a powerful, well-made keyboard that’s super comfortable once you get used to it, but be prepared for a steep learning curve.

Kinesis Advantage360 Review: Niche, Comfy Keys with a Steep Learning Curve : Read more

 

[Findecanor]

The Kinesis started in the early '90s by essentially copying the Maltron's unibody design. They have been making the same shape since then with different electronics inside.

In the mid 2010's, enthusiasts started 3D-printing their own keyboards with contoured bowl similar to Kinesis' and Maltron's but split into two parts: the most popular being the Dactyl keyboard. It was open source, and led to many variations.
The Kinesis Advantage 360 is kind of Kinesis' answer to that one.
Most of what has been said in his article about typing on the 360 can be said about these earlier keyboards.

BTW. The definition of "ortho-linear" as in the original TypeMatrix paper is that the keys are on a perfect 90° grid.
This keyboard has a "column-oriented" layout.
Although the terms have been quite muddled up in the ergo-keyboard community.

 

[Dementoss]

The Kinesis started in the early '90s by essentially copying the Maltron's unibody design. They have been making the same shape since then with different electronics inside.

A member on another forum I frequent, who is also a tech author and journalist, has a Maltron. He says the Maltron is good to use but, despite the high price, he also says the build quality is abysmal. Given this one's very high price, I would like to think this is rather better built, although this keyboard layout is not for me anyway.

 

[sygreenblum]

This keyboard is actually pretty great. Do to a unrelated injury, I have wrist/hand issues when typing for long periods and this keyboard essentially solved them. Although, much of this can be attributed moving most of the pinky reaching to the thumb keys. If the price is to high or you don't like the layout, I strongly recommend using one of the many other keyboards that utilize a thumb cluster over pinky reaching. Sometimes you don't realize the pain your in until the pain is removed.

One thing I will say is the learning curve is no joke. I typically type about 100 words per minute with few mistakes but on first try I was at about 10 with an unacceptable amount of errors. After about 6 weeks I was up to about 80 and after a year I'm in the mid 90's consistently. However, do to the extensive programmability , I have switched my layout to colemak-dh and used a programming layer to keep Vim keys the same. Since the programming is in the keyboard it stills works when ssh tunneling into a server, which previously was a problem.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

Kinesis makes pretty solid keyboards, and this one seems pretty good though I would take a massive hit in typing initially due to the keys moved from pinky to thumb.

I wish these were a thing when I used to lift heavy chest, these would’ve been a life saver after upper body day as well.