[chipperyman573]

A while back I got diagnosed with carpal and cubital tunnel. After many, many hours of research, I eventually bought a Quefrency from Keebio (https://keeb.io/pages/assembly-service has the premade ones) to see if it would help. I can now confidently say, if you are worried about getting CT, or you have it and want something easier on your hands, you _need_ to check this out. Seriously, for most people on here an injury like CT can make you lose your job. The split form factor really helps alleviate the pain. Not bending your wrists or elbows helps way more than you can imagine. Even now my hands will still hurt if I use a regular keyboard but I can type on my split board all day long. The Quefrency also has the advantage of not being a different form factor (like the Dactyl), it's just a standard 60% split staggered layout (the smaller form factor helps reduce finger travel as well, but imo it's mostly the split). Plus, it just runs off a pro micro so you can flash your own firmware very easily (it runs on QMK which is open source)

I've also heard good things about the levinson and nyquist but I haven't personally tested them. I have also used an Iris for a while and like it a lot, but it looks like they're backordered for now. The viterbi looks a little big imho, but if you want a big split board it would definitely be a good option.

I actually am somewhat in the keyboard business right now (I got inspired by how well it worked, and it's really fun!), if anyone has any questions or needs some recommendations feel free to AMA.

BTW, if you end up going with a different form factor, be ready to type at 10-20WPM for at least a week or two. When I got my first ortho board, I typed at 13WPM and gained back roughly 5-10WPM a week. You can't use a standard layout while you learn, either, or you lose a ton of the muscle memory.

[kibibyte]

A slight tangent, but one very nice side benefit with split keyboards is that if you use a Mac and use a Magic Trackpad, you can fit the trackpad between the two keyboard halves and split the mousing load between your two hands. Just switching to this setup (versus a normal mouse off to the right) took a lot of pain off my right wrist.

[cerberusss]

Seconding split keyboards. I'm in the process of building a Quefrency and it's fun. But to have something working right now, I bought the Kinesis Freestyle2, which is available for macOS and Windows, with a Bluetooth version to boot.e

[the_pwner224]

About a year ago I bought half of a Nyquist (6x5 - 5 is standard height minus the F-row, which is not a big deal since you have a second layer) and a Vieterbi (7x5). That gives enough space to fit a full 60% keyboard layout, but unlike the Quefrency the keys are in a grid instead of staggered. Getting used to it didn't take long for me.

I can use the computer faster and more efficiently than with a full-size keyboard, since you have a second layer to put buttons onto and so your fingers don't need to move (it's completely programmable; add 30 layers if you want). I had two buttons, one where the Fn key is on laptops (lower left), and one where the enter key normally is (mid right), to switch to the second layer, where I had WASD,QE,RF = arrow keys, home/end, pgup/dn, and hjkl = arrow keys. This is very useful. And stuff like printscreen, media controls, etc. no longer require stretching your fingers or moving your hands. I had space in the corners on both thumbs, and backspace/enter right next to those on the left/right hands. Also useful and saves your pinky from long stretches to backspace. Positioning it naturally aligned with your arms & wrists is also great.

Overall, highly recommend the Viterbi - which would give you an extra column beyond what I had. But not sure how it would work in half paired with the new Nyquist revision; the Viterbi hasn't been updated yet iirc.

I built that one with loud clicky Cherry Blue switches; recently I switched to the newer revision Nyquist with quiet Matias/Alps tactile switches. The switches are great but very few keycap options; the official ones make it not that quiet since they're not a perfect fit with the keys and thus rattle. The Blues were great but eventually the loudness starts to become just slightly painful; now I use the `bucklespring` program on my computer to simulate it. The new Nyquist has the microcontroller built into the PCB, which simplifies assembly, and adds support for key backlighting, which is useful in the dark. The lack of the 13th column really hurts; with the Nyquist+Viterbi you get a full keyboard with stuff like the F-keys and arrow keys on the second layer. With this I need to put things like +=-_\ and []{} on the second layer. This effectively makes it a triple-layer setup for typing, since you need to use both shift and Fn to write characters, whereas previously Fn was for moving around and doing actions. Even after a long while to get used to it my brain often gets confused and I have to pause for a few seconds to try to figure out how to insert the character. But at the same time lighting is essential (to me) for working at night, and even if that wasn't an issue I don't want to spend another $120 on making a new Viterbi or Nyquist/Viterbi hybrid with quieter keyswitches.

So overall the Nyquist seems like the sort of thing hardcore keyboard enthusiasts would buy, and less suitable for programmers (maybe OK for other people). You can head over to /r/mechanicalkeyboards to find plenty of weirdos who would spend $50 on a single keycap and keep a collection of keyboards with 30 keys total.

If you don't mind sharing, what do you do in the kb business?