The biggest pain in vim is the escape key. And no, ctrl+[ isn't any better.
I believe people with poor keyboards don't even have escape keys any more though
I'm happy with the generic HP keyboard I'm using at the moment, circa 2014, and my T410s old style thinkpad keyboard.
You -do- have the useless, enormous capslock key remapped to control, right? ;-)
Anyway, it's common to remap jj or jk to esc.
noremap! kj <esc>
it means when you press kj [0] that it's the same as pressing escape.. very handy (the times when I deliberately want to press k and then j are still zero)
[0] https://github.com/patrickdavey/dotfiles/blob/335254dce90d5c...