What and why
The glove80 is an ortholinear, column staggered, ergonomic, split keyboard with concave key wells from MoErgo.
Picture from the manufacturer:
In layman’s terms, two hunks of circuitry wrapped in plastic with buttons that follow the curve of how your fingers naturally move. Postage included these hunks will set you back about $400.
Two impulses lead to me owning one:
- Desire to optimize
- Minor wrist pain + anxious nature that enjoys future proofing everything
New toys also go brrt and my employer paid for it. I did pick it out.
I would like to highlight that the main reason was to optimize. I am from the Nordic countries, which means the keyboard available to me throughout my youth with all the keys I need to communicate in my native language are not exactly optimal for programming. Some of the most notable annoyances:
$,{}, and[]for need a separate modifier- Tilde(~), carat(^) and backticks(`) are behind a modifier and require a chord
- Buttons are used for accents like ã, â and á
- To get a tilde, you need to put a space behind it
- `a => à
- `(space)a => `a
At the intersection of my minor wrist pain and desire to optimize lies the repeated wrist motions to access keys like backspace and enter. I would prefer to not go back and forth to access those.
And to be utterly clear, I don’t experience constant, significant, or debilitating pain. I am somewhat sore at times and would still like to have functional wrists in ten years, so I’m getting ahead of this.
How it went
Ordered my glove80 which came with a carrying case. Initially I thought the case was sleek and nice, but after a while I realized it obscures the fact that the only reasonable way to move the damn thing is to pack it up in the carry case. The halves are awkwardly shaped and not too sturdy so throwing it in a backpack seems unwise. The case is nice, but I would like to be able to move my keyboard without a suitcase sized carry case.
The difficulty of carrying is likely related to how many keys there are (80, 40 per half, 6 of which are in each thumb cluster). I adore the big thumb clusters, as they essentially eliminate the wrist movements. This was what made me pick the glove80 over ZSA offerings like the voyager (two thumb cluster keys per side) or the Moonlander (four thumb cluster keys per side).
My needs for optimizing were met, albeit it was laborious. I got the configuration software to do everything I wanted it to do eventually, but some things like a dedicated key for backticks took some thinking (ended up doing a multi-key macro). You can use ZMK and build it yourself, which allows you to store your configuration in a git repo. I will probably do this from now on.
A few years ago I had tried Dvorak due to the need to optimize, but it came with a bunch of problems. Almost every time I played a game, I needed to rebind all of the keys. That was, if the game even allowed for it. If I used someone else’s computer, I granny typed with my index fingers. Eventually I gave up, but formed a theory that the benefits of Dvorak could be achieved via other means, which would give the speed and comfort benefits without the problems. My current layout seems to validate that theory. The learning curve was notably better as well, but my earlier experimentation may have helped with that.
On the topic of gaming, the glove80 is somewhat cumbersome in fps games. The keys one is supposed to use with the middle and the ring finger are deeper within the key wells. This is quite comfortable when typing, but not the best when using wasd to move. I added a layer that shifted everything to the right by one space, but this then had problems with what keys were available. Reaching T with your right hand is trivial under normal circumstances, but if everything is shifted to the right by a step, it jumps to the other half. After a while, I just settled to having a separate gaming keyboard. Unlike with Dvorak, I have no problems switching back and forth.
My major complaints have to do with minor physical traits. The feet of the keyboard seem to have very little traction, so after a while the keyboard tends to drift around my table. Not only do I need to readjust it, the pads at the bottom of the feet are glued on and they aren’t glued on that well, so in six months I’ve had to replace maybe four or five of them. On a related note, I have no idea who designed the tenting solution, but it does not work for me. Every time I tried, I ended up with a fragile wobbly configuration and after a few days went back to the flat configuration.
Overall verdict
In short, I would say it does the bare minimum. It works. It fills my configuration needs, but I do think I may have been more satisfied with one of the ZSA options I considered. If there was a smaller ergo keyboard with 4-5+ thumb cluster keys I would seriously consider switching to it.