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| title: Thoughts on the Glove80 | ||
| publishDate: 2024-10-05 | ||
| --- | ||
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| These are my impressions of the [MoErgo | ||
| Glove80](https://www.moergo.com/collections/glove80-keyboards/products/glove80-ergonomic-keyboard-revision-2-with-cherry-blossom-30gf-silent-linear-switches?variant=50146620965137) | ||
| after using the [Kinesis Advantage360](https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/adv360pro/) | ||
| for about a year and a half. | ||
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| The Advantage360 Pro is a great keyboard, and I'm grateful to Kinesis for making | ||
| a product that may have saved my career early on. However, the 360 Pro has some | ||
| design flaws which are a bit unexpected from a keyboard with a nearly $500 price | ||
| tag. | ||
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| I find that the Glove80 solves *every single one of these flaws* with surgical | ||
| precision. It's also less expensive! | ||
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| In short, I believe the Glove80 succeeds in a few primary design decisions: | ||
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| - Creating the most ergonomic keyboard possible. | ||
| - Incredible attention to detail, providing an answer to all of the "papercuts" | ||
| in the design of the existing split ergonomic keyboards on the market. | ||
| - Providing an experience that is worthy of the keyboard's price tag. | ||
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| Seriously, I am loving this keyboard. | ||
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| I ended up ordering the Glove80 after getting frustrated with the bluetooth | ||
| issues on the 360 Pro. A well-known issue with the 360 Pro is that the two | ||
| halves will sometimes have trouble connecting. One morning, before work, it took | ||
| me 10 minutes to connect the two halves. I remembered the the Glove80 reviews | ||
| from [Ben Frain](https://youtu.be/Q-mNGb7-Ywo), [If Coding Were | ||
| Natural](https://youtu.be/iwjtiNxAkMA), and [Code to the | ||
| Moon](https://youtu.be/PFFa3h7eLWM) - there was a way out! I went straight the | ||
| MoErgo website and bought the Glove80. | ||
|
|
||
| Here are my impressions, which are primarly comparisons with the 360 Pro. | ||
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||
| ## First impressions | ||
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| First off - the bluetooth works flawlessly. Pull the keyboard out of the **travel | ||
| case**, turn the two halves on, and start working. I feel like I shouldn't even | ||
| have to mention this, as it should be a given. However, this was not the case | ||
| with the 360 Pro. | ||
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| Also, yes, it comes with a travel case. This is nice because I take the keyboard | ||
| to and from work. Kinesis does not have a travel case for the Advantage360 Pro, | ||
| but I was able to make one using [this case from | ||
| Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09WBWTL8B/). It's great that MoErgo | ||
| includes an official one. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Ergonomics | ||
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| The Glove80 is incredibly comfortable to type on, which is important for an | ||
| ergonomic keyboard! I find that the Glove80's design around ergonomics makes | ||
| much more sense to me than the 360's design. | ||
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| First of all, the Glove80 is low profile - it doesn't sit very high on the desk. | ||
| The 360 is quite thick, and I never understood how I was meant to work around | ||
| this aspect of the design. Even when working at adjustable-height desks, I could | ||
| never get my desk low enough so that the 360 would be at a comfortable height. | ||
| When I did, my desk would be too low while I was using my mouse. The Glove80's | ||
| low profile solves this. Funny enough, this problem is actually directly | ||
| referenced in some of MoErgo's marketing material. This is what I mean when I | ||
| say the Glove80 brings an attention to detail to many of the papercuts in design | ||
| that I've seen in competing keyboards. | ||
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| The Glove80's thumb cluster is also much more usable than that of the 360. Out | ||
| of the 7 keys allocated to the each thumb on the 360, I only found 2, maybe 3, | ||
| usable by my thumbs while typing. The other keys are so far out of the way that | ||
| I was never able to figure out their intended use. Are you meant to reach for | ||
| them? Are they just extra keys tacked onto the thumb cluster? When I did use | ||
| them, primarily as modifier keys, I'd have to contort my wrist at a weird angle | ||
| to combo them with other keys. To be fair, I also had this problem on the | ||
| Ergodox, on which I ended up flipping around a keycap on the bottom row for use | ||
| as a third usable thumb key. The Glove80's 6 thumb keys are all located in a place that | ||
| is comfortable to reach from the thumb. Honestly, it's one of the few thumb | ||
| clusters I've seen that actually looks like it's designed for a human thumb. | ||
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| While most ergonomic keyboards use MX-style mechanical switches, the Glove80 | ||
| uses choc switches, which are a low-profile mechanical switch. I wasn't sure how | ||
| I'd find this, but as soon as I used them, I was immediately on board. My | ||
| Glove80 has the new Cherry Blossom switches, and it's the smoothest typing | ||
| experience I've ever felt. They're extremely quiet, and while my younger self | ||
| might have preferred the feedback of a heavy, loud switch (I used to type on | ||
| ergo clears), I've come to appreciate light and silent switches. Lighter | ||
| switches are much less fatiguing, and the quieter sound profile makes me feel | ||
| more nimble on my fingers. This is the same feeling I got from using the | ||
| Logitech MX Keys for a while. Maybe it's my musical training - the low-profile | ||
| silent switches almost feel like playing an instrument to me. I can train my | ||
| fingers to move as efficiently as possible, moving no more than absolutely | ||
| essential to hit each key. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Customizing the keyboard | ||
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| I also find the Glove80's solution to customizing the keyboard much better than | ||
| the 360. The 360's workflow is as follows: | ||
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| - Fork the keyboard's ZMK configuration repo from Kinesis on GitHub | ||
| - Make changes in code, commit and push them up | ||
| - Wait for the GitHub Actions workflow to build your new firmware (takes about 2 | ||
| minutes on average), or build locally with the provided Docker setup | ||
| - Flash the firmware onto the keyboard | ||
|
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||
| The amount of technical knowledge required for this process isn't great for most | ||
| people, but I wasn't too bothered by it. I get that Kinesis recommends only | ||
| recommends this options for powerusers. However, I was bothered by waiting for | ||
| 2 - 3 minutes for a build every time I made a change to my layout. I also wasn't | ||
| a fan of waiting 2 minutes just to see a build error from a typo or syntax error | ||
| in my config. | ||
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||
| I also didn't find a lot of support or information from Kinesis on | ||
| details around programming the keyboard. I was usually able to find what I | ||
| needed from the ZMK docs, but not always. For example, some options in ZMK | ||
| require the keyboard's key positions, which I couldn't find any information for | ||
| ([I ended up contributing this back to the repo after I figured it | ||
| out](https://github.com/KinesisCorporation/Adv360-Pro-ZMK/issues/217)). In | ||
| general, the experience around the software with the 360 Pro still feels | ||
| unfinished, especially given the price point - for a product like this, it's not | ||
| enough to just get the hardware right. | ||
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| The Glove80 is much better this regard, and provides an online layout editor. | ||
| Here's the workflow: | ||
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| - Make a layout on the online editor | ||
| - Build the firmware (takes about 5 seconds for me!) | ||
| - Flash the firmware onto the keyboard | ||
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| While it's not as nice as Oryx from ZSA, it's pretty good for most quick | ||
| changes, and most importantly, firmware builds quickly! [There is also good | ||
| documentation provided](https://docs.moergo.com/layout-editor-guide/). Custom | ||
| ZMK-level changes are also quite straightforward. I was able to move my homerow | ||
| mod setup from my 360 config over within minutes. | ||
|
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||
| ## Downsides? | ||
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| When I was initially writing this, I was going to list the tenting mechanism as | ||
| one of the pitfalls of the Glove80. The tenting mechanism is achieved with feet | ||
| that can be unscrewed to adjust the height. This allows for a precise level of | ||
| customization, but the mechanism can be tedious to screw and unscrew, especially | ||
| when using the travel case often. A few points on this: | ||
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| - This design choice is intentional. As I mentioned before, the Glove80 is | ||
| designed to be as ergonomic as possible, as offering this level of custom | ||
| tenting is part of that. | ||
| - I assumed I would need to screw the feet back in every time in put the | ||
| keyboard back in the case. It turns out this is not necessary - the case is able | ||
| to hold the keyboard comfortably even with my current tenting configuration! | ||
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| Because of this, I'm not even sure that I have any strong downsides of the | ||
| Glove80 to mention. | ||
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| Thanks to MoErgo for a great keyboard! |