Comment by Reefersleep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Reefersleep | Hacker News Reader

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I didn't do any testing to figure out where the latency came from, but the article was pretty thorough in documenting the palpable difference between Ergodox and e.g. the Apple Magic keyboard. I managed to dig it up for you: https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/

Come to think of it, I might have incurred some latency myself with the particular layout I'd brewed; some keys had dual meanings depending on whether I held them down or not. That was a patch on the problem I had with the physical Ergodox layout lacking my Danish characters, though, so even if I'm partly to blame myself for the latency, that wouldn't have made a great difference in my overall assessment.

I agree fully; pick whatever suits you. I kind of still want a mechanical keyboard that has extreme amounts of click and clack, just because it feels so nice to type with. I just don't know which model I'd pick, and it'd be pretty expensive for something I'd only use occasionally.

> https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/

I'm surprised the HHKB2 scores better than the Ergodox. I used one for years but found it to type more sluggish. I suspect this is due to Topre switches requiring a bit more force to push down.

> Come to think of it, I might have incurred some latency myself with the particular layout I'd brewed

Oh yeah, the dual-function keys are horrible latency wise. I tried various ways of reducing this, but you end up having to choose between high latency or low latency but keys not registering. I ended up not using dual-function keys because of this. This is a bummer, because the concept is great.

The Ergodox/QMK does let you tweak the USB polling rate, but I haven't really taken a good look at this yet.

> I kind of still want a mechanical keyboard that has extreme amounts of click and clack, just because it feels so nice to type with. I just don't know which model I'd pick, and it'd be pretty expensive for something I'd only use occasionally.

Personally I'd love to see something like the Ergodox, but a bit more compact (e.g. no thumb cluster), and half the height. Height especially is something that seems overlooked with mechanical keyboards. This is a shame, as I suspect it's easier to keep your hands/arms at the right angle with a flatter keyboard.

The HHKB2 in the article is Lite2 that's cheap edition and doesn't have Topre switches but basic membrane switches.

> A major source of latency is key travel time. It’s not a coincidence that the quickest keyboard measured also has the shortest key travel distance by a large margin.

So this article's measurement highly depending on key switches. So it should use gaming keyboard that uses shallower actuation point key switches. I also want to see how variable actuation point keyboard works. (like Topre's Realforce APC)

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