I tried reading this article with genuine interest but the page crashed for me on iOS :(
This seems to be happening more often in the back half of 2024. IGN crashes nearly every page view for me these days.
replies(6):
I was intrigued by the design so I wanted to share.
Here was my experience on an M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM, in Safari with no extensions:
This is why I have absolutely zero qualms with using an ad blocker to the fullest extent I can.
I hate what these people do to computers.
Pity, though, the progress is still stalled on the actual layout - the ergonomic splits and other improvements are still a tiny niche
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-privacy-browser/...
I could host videos myself if I still had a 2 gigabit connection but that was left behind in my most recent move.
Here's a nice intro review of a Hall Effect keyboard, from Switch and Click, which explains its features and differences compared to a normal switch keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNANUquoXOA
For those not in the know, hall-effect key switches can tell the analog position of each key, rather than only whether it's pressed or not as in traditional key switches.
There’s lots of discussion about the actuation point, but is there a “click” feel?
I’ve had a lot of wrist strain issues over the last 20 years. I tried many “ergonomic” keyboard layouts, but ultimately switching to a standard ikcb CD108 with Cherry MX brown fixed my issue. The click stops me from mashing the keys too hard, which seems to be the primary root cause (for me).
Edit: Thanks for the corrections in the comments below.
Hall effect switches have been used in model railroading for a couple of generations now. Very often to stop and start engines in hard-to-reach places with a wand.
Here's an explanation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect_sensor
The key/switch has a little magnet on the stem and the hall effect sensor is measuring the strength of the magnetic field as the magnet moves up/further & down/closer to the sensor.
I daily drive the Moonlander, both for work and gaming, and it's honestly really good. Would be awesome to get a similar keyboard but with magnetic keys.
Since booleans default to false, I would say: no.
More seriously, if you assign different meanings to a key relating to how deep it gets pressed, it will result in lots of key misses I suppose. You will have to develop a piano feel, but for a piano there is a correlation with loudness.
So if you define a soft action for a gentle press on space, and a "stronger" action for a deep press on space, maybe you can do useful things without fucking up your typing.
Things like: going to
start of word, (soft)
start of sentence (medium)
column 0 (hard)
Perhaps I'm just unaware, but I thought Wooting was the company behind HE keyboards becoming a commercial product. When they did their first HE keyboard I certainly didn't see any other HE keyboards on the market. I would still be using Wooting if they had a Low-profile HE version.
It seems that while I've been not paying attention, HE keyboards have become a thing finally and, more importantly, Low-Profile HE keyboards are now a thing. This makes me super happy as I only use LP keyboards now days. I love my Keychron K15 Pro!
Being contactless, they’re extremely smooth, quiet and reliable, and being able to set the actuation point exactly where you want it is a very nice bonus.
I’ve been using a Monsgeek M1 HE (I think probably still the cheapest option on the market, even though it’s an incredibly solid block of aluminium) since the summer, mostly just for coding, and for me it’s the best keyboard I’ve ever used.
If your preference is for tactile/clicky switches, or heavier linear switches that you hit hard enough to bottom out, or you’re perfectly happy with any old membrane keyboard, it’s probably not worth the expense.
I can think of a couple ways to adjust a mechanic click from software. You could put gears and a stepper motor in the keyboard to adjust where the click is (you of course need to design a click mechanism as the keys don't have it) - this would be complex, fragile, and expensive (likely large as well). You could put a coil under each switch and fire that when the key actuates to provide a force change. There are probably others. I have no idea how practical anything is, but I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying it if you are interested - it sounds like a fun project (of the type I don't have time for)
This article is about GAMING keyboards. Magnetic keyboards seems to offer some nice features gamers will use. However for general typing a traditional mechanical keyboard may well be better: do not feel bad about using Cherry MX browns if they work for you (I use them myself, but I'm trying to figure out if my budget allows for a model F) - the only downside is in competitive games you may lose to someone who has a keyboard that can do things yours cannot.
A standard mechanical keyboard has a fixed actuation point. If you want to change that you need to replace the switches. A Hall-Effect keyboard allows you to tune the actuation point exactly where you like. You can also tune the actuation and reset points independently and even in relation to each other. That allows you to have a reset on a slight raise of the finger without having to raise past as absolute point in travel.
As an example of how the analog nature of HE keyboard could be useful, you could (in theory) set it up so that key repeat rate is adjusted based on how far past actuation you have the key. So, if I press harder the key repeats faster. Sure, you can solve the same problem with navigation shortcuts, but the point is that having a keyboard that captures an analog value for each key opens a wide range of possible use cases. I'm personally ecstatic that they are finally releasing Low-Profile HE keyboards.
Yes I recognize that. But I've seen hall-effect keyboard many, many times and magnetic keyboard never (before this post). I guess some company decided to call their keyboard a magnetic keyboard and now a specific subset of people think they're all called that - even though they've been called hall-effect keyboards since their inception.
But then you have people who play casually--and let me be clear here, even if you are very good and only play ranked competitive matches, if it's not your job, you're who I'm talking about--who get this same gear. They deck themselves out like the pros for what is, essentially, a hobby. Is that weird? I don't know. People who head out to the local basketball court typically go with only a Spalding they bought at Walmart. Folks who play a little footy on the weekends might buy shin guards, but otherwise just head out to a field.
I don't know where I'm really going with all this, it just seems odd that a person would say one should buy a keyboard that allows for 1mm actuation, when the vast, vast majority of game players wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.
Edit: HE sensors not switches. HE naturally measures distance, but there are switches that have electronics that provide an on/off signal thus making the term switch not useful. If you buy a HE switch make sure you know which style you are getting.
Just out of curiosity, is there some vetting process for keyboards that qualifies them as "not cheating"? Any hardware advances in input/output devices could be considered an unfair advantage, right? If my keyboard is a simple, non-smart one with significantly lower latency than your keyboard, does that mean I'm cheating? At some point you have to draw a line and say 'this is acceptable' and 'that is not', who draws the line? Does the line move? When does it move?
Cheating is going outside the defined rules of a game. If a specific game calls out that macros of any kind are forbidden, then great, that means some of the features of modern keyboards are cheating. Now, how do you police that? Pro-level competitive players are likely to be so fast and coordinated as to be close to indistinguishable from a well configured macro. Really, if you want to have limits on input devices, you need to codify that into the game, not say any advances in keyboard design are cheating. If using a macro lets a player be better than everyone else, limit the input capability to the level that is considered fair and don't worry about what keyboard someone is using. Otherwise, it's like complaining about someone using expensive high-refresh-rate gear and calling them a cheater.
Hall effect sensor is commonly used to refer to any magnetic field sensor but there are many others types. Given the size of the keys I suspect they are actually MEMS Lorrentz force sensors, so “magnetic keyboard” might be more correct.
People will spend thousands to ride the same bikes the Tour de France riders do. You can spend crazy amounts on basketball shoes, sweat wicking synthetic shirts and all sorts of other gear that LeBron uses.
If there is a sport that requires buying specialized equipment, there are people buying stuff that is completely unnecessary for their use case.
What you're describing in your second paragraph is how good anticheat works. It is inevitable and unfortunate (from the perspective of GP) that it must be tuned to near-olympic performance as the cap (or you risk punishing people who are just good, which is a really bad idea).
edit: Of course, once you go down this rabbithole you start realising that olympic level performance is a freak accident of genetics, which is like having your own little biological "cheat". It makes you categorically better than other people at specific things. We return to the statement that figuring out whether that's cheating is immaterial. To my mind it's also a waste of time.
It makes sense on a laptop. But, if I already need to have a clear place on my desk for the keyboard and mouse, I'd rather just use an extra 2 inches to have the full size keyboard with the numpad and arrow keys that are not crammed against the rest of the keyboard.
Most of these Hall effect keyboards are all running linear switches - no tactility whatsoever. I’ve seen a handful of switches which are HE and tactile, but I’ve not tried them. Glorious Panda HE are a notable model - if the name is consistent with their past efforts these should be significantly more tactile than the MX Browns you currently use.
If the tactile feedback both existed and was adjustable, and didn't cost more than like 5-10% over a mechanical switch, it might take off more. But for now as neat as it is, it feels extremely niche. If someone wants different activation pressures and distances, they can buy different mechanical switches and would be missing out on basically nothing.
So the keyboard learns your current mistakes and fixes them in the future. This sounds excellent except once you get used to having your mistakes fixed for you, you become dependent to this type of keyboard. Personally I'm not ready for AI keyboards, I like the control I have over what I type, mistakes and all.
I hope it works out for you and get your moneys worth... How much did you pay for yours?
The asymmetric nature of having it at the right side drives me crazy.
I want my hands at the middle of the keyboard, not cramped to the left side, with so much space at the right, for keys I almost never use.
Having said that, my current keyboard has no numpad.
You said 2 inches but it’s actually half the width of a 13” laptop.
I can fit a compact keyboard and a trackpad in the size of a normal keyboard.
Something else for someone who has time to work on. Have fun.
I can't load the page at all without the extensions. On AdGuard I'm using only the content blocker filters that don't have access to the page itself, not the advanced filter which does.
The AdGuard content blocker is my favorite for Safari even on desktop. I can't imagine browsing without it enabled.
There's no tactile feedback when the switch activates, but you can adjust the actuation point of the switch to where it feels comfortable to you. I've set mine to be just about as sensitive as possible.
I don't use the number row above my keyboard except on rare occasions or to type the shifted characters. If I need to quickly type a number without looking, the numpad is the only way to do that (for me).
I tried a friends "compact" gaming keyboard, and then to the right of his keyboard was a separate "macro" keyboard which was basically just a numpad... so why not just have a numpad?
A Hall effect sensor works by running a constant current in one direction while measuring the potential difference in a different axis. The keyboard’s PCB needs to be able to register a range of values, not simply binary on-off. Regular keyboards aren’t equipped to do that.
Typically in an HE keyboard, the sensors are mounted to the PCB. The “switch” itself is just a neodymium magnet at the end of a POM stem, in a polycarbonate housing with a spring.
There are other kinds of magnetic switch that have historically been used in keyboards – e.g. Fujitsu used reed switches in the 70s – and in theory you could probably build them into a Cherry MX-compatible package. But they wouldn’t provide many of the benefits of HE keyboards, besides smoothness and reliability, and I’m not aware of anyone doing it.
Probably the most practical DIY option.
By measuring contact bounce, you can probably detect the difference between fast and slow presses, but not much more. Maybe three or four levels total
USB and BT are security nightmares, and the browser is a fantastic sandbox. I'm pretty sure a lot of 0-days will come from there.
From the perspective of a programmer using vim, the Advantage2 is mankind's peak achievement in the field of computer keyboards.
These hall effect dealios do sound interesting but I've never liked linear. I dont think I'm interested in changing the actuation point since it would be desynchronized from the bump point. As far as analog controls go, I have controllers for that.
There's amateur photographers who have a super-expensive camera.
Weekend artists with a cupboard full of the pricest paints and papers.
Super-expensive bicycles that only get ridden a few days a year.
idk, I don't have a 3d printer, but if I did, I'd probably give it a try.
I got an ROG Azoth awhile back for that reason.
Would be nice to see how far they can push the technology though!
Given that the time to physically press the key down is a part of the latency, Hall Effect could easily beat out Mechanical in the long run. After all, you can make it almost arbitrarily sensitive.
EDIT: Looks like wired mechanicals at the top end are tied (0.8ms) with the best Halls (0.8ms) and a bit better than the best wireless 2.4Ghz (1.7ms). Mea culpa. We still need more test data on Halls in general though. Removed my comment about Wireless being better - though generally wireless 2.4 GHz beats out all but the top-end wired keyboards.
I doubt these folks do any meaningful numerical work, so they do not understand the convenience of the numpad.
For racing games, that means a real throttle.
And it's also nice with FPS games to have the W key mapped at half-press to W, and full-press to SHIFT and W. Most FPS games require you to press an additional key (such as shift) to run, even though you'll spend 99.99% of your time running.
That being said, I wouldn't buy a keyboard (magnetic or otherwise) for more than $50.
With the high latency (I measured up to 90ms at 1000hz which is ridiculously high), and competitive games banning use of macros, it’s pretty useless for gaming.
The Advantage2 keyboard geometry gives you many landmarks, so even if you don't touch-type your hands can find the keys. In other words, even if you have poor keyboard technique (lifting your hands, pecking, etc.) this keyboard is a big win.
Recommend you don't waste time on inferior alternatives like ZSA Moonlander, but maybe that will be your mistake ("learning opportunity") along the way to the peak.
NYT article about it from back then: https://archive.is/ANcdu and a picture of it from wikipedia showing the lack of legends on the keycaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Keyboard#/media/File:DasKe...
These days, it wouldn't be that hard to make yourself. Various brands of mechanical keyboard switches come in a variety of activation forces. Get a keyboard with swappable switches, and tune the weights to your own preference. For example, on my keyboard I use these switches with a 67g weight, but could get some 62g and 65g ones for the pinky keys.
Radio is also generally significantly more consistent - even when the polling rates are identical. You can see this if you look at the testing done by RTings for mice and keyboards. The latency when using 2.4GHz wireless is extremely consistent, while for standard wired connections, the latency varies drastically from input to input.
Bluetooth is crap and should never be used for gaming inputs. It's both high latency and inconsistent.
Edit: thinking more about it, I’d rather use a solar cell powered ble enabled calculator with all the usual buttons (M*, +-, C/AC, <, etc) and a screen, rather than having a built-in or separate numpad which sucks for one-hand input anyway.
2. Use Privacy Badger.
3. Block Google Tag Manager.
All popups gone. Page works fine.
Privacy Badger warns that some sites won't work with Google Tag Manager blocked, but in practice, that does not seem to be a serious problem. Although some will route you through Cloudflare's CAPTCHA barrier for that, you can still get in.
If a site won't work with strong ad blocking, I stop using it.
I was afraid the money was lost at about the two year mark so it was a nice bonus when they finally started actually producing and shipping the thing.
I've been more reluctant with kickstarters ever since...
But the best keyboards these days approach around 0.8 ms: https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/reviews/corsair/k100-air
Not sure why this option isn't more popular tbh since you can put the numpad where you want it.
PC choices are obvious, for ios I’m using AdGuard app that integrates as Safari content filter (blocks almost the same as ubo).
No, it’s not a separate “adblock browser”. It works as a content filtering rules source for Safari. It does not see what you’re doing or visiting (unless you insist in the settings).
But it’s a niche (competitive gamers and mechanical keyboard enthusiasts) with deep pockets, to whom “buying a new keyboard” is basically no barrier at all.
It's not hard to design beautiful and usable websites, which works on all devices from the past 10-15 years.
And as a bonus, I can type numbers faster on the top row than I could on a keypad since I'm using 8 fingers, and my hands stay in home position for mixing with letters and other symbols. Combine that with being easily able to switch to a laptop keyboard and still type at full speed -- I've just never seen the point of a keypad.
If only configuration includes randomness, is aware of body mechanics like difference between pressing same button strings with different fingers and so on and so forth.
> Really, if you want to have limits on input devices, you need to codify that into the game, not say any advances in keyboard design are cheating.
Smart Tap has been banned by Valve in CS2 precisely because the input processing has codified certain behavior since grandgrandfather of the engine and that code is being bypassed by software that emulates inputs.
If you want software to play the games for you then go for it, but it will be different games. That's why tool-assisted speedruns/superplay have their own place.
With the separate numpad you can position it just above the mousepad so it's still easily accessible, but you have minimal movement distance between typing and using the mouse. To me it's the best of both worlds, and it's strange to me that it isn't more common to sell the two as a package. I suppose the assumption is that people who want numpad will just buy a 90% keyboard and numpad separately.
Some gamers even position their keyboards at very harsh angles or nigh perpendicular to their body all just to make more space.
I had an HHKB-looking mechanical 60%, and just remapped a few things to be nicer for programming. Function key instead of caps lock, and suddenly so much was at my fingertips. Something like Fn-IJKL for arrows, and pageup/dn, home/end, located somewhere reasonable relative to the arrows. And, a bright red anodized aluminum case, which had a built-in angle, making it very nice to use. More pinky movements than usual, but I made sure to have Fn keys on both sides, to be able to give one or the other a break.
The Preonic '50%' is also pretty neat, and I was pretty productive with the default layout. Hand size was a bit of an issue, but once again, everything I could need was under my fingers with a layer change or two, or some 2-key-combo layer.
Gaming was a nonstarter on either of those boards. I need to at least have a TKL or 65+%, and have it be a sturdy tank. I love my NK87, and use it with Kailh Crystal Box Pink switches. Used to use Box Jades, but these Pinks are crispy.
If someone wanted to get crazy about their mech board and individual key strength, properties, etc, there's a dead simple option of "Buy the stiffer/softer switch as well, install in desired position". Hot-swap sockets are on plenty of keyboards these days, and I've totally heard of people using stiffer switches on the spacebar.
Overall the ergonomic trend seems to be towards reducing wrist movement, thats why layouts like Corne are relatively popular, you can basically keep your hands at "home row position" all the time.
I do also think that numpads are also simply just less useful today than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Back in the days lot of data was still on paper or some other disconnected form. But these days? Where are you getting all those numbers that you are entering on numpad? What numeric data are you handling that is not already on your computer? I really do believe there has been shift in workflows so that people are far less typing in strings of numbers all the time.
Also the field75 he mentioned in the OP does tie that keyboard's wired latency:
Kids these days who are 'graduating' from default laptop keyboard, $40 wireless keyboard/mouse combo, etc to "Hardware I picked out for myself" have plenty of good options, considering how hardware has gotten SO much nicer over the few decades I've been using it.
The 1mm actuation thing is probably for advertising how 'good/sensitive/capable' their switches are. I would personally never use something like that, what with my heavy hands. Little Timmy, on the other hand, is wading through a bunch of actually-decent mass-market options, and may see 1mm actuation as "WOW, NOTHING HAS EVER BEEN THIS GOOD!"
I'm not a competitive gamer, but being able to have so much control over the key activation is cooler than I expected. Also, having analog WASD movement in a first person game is super intuitive. Unfortunately, a lot of games don't support it because they try to be smart and switch between "gamepad mode" and "keyboard mode", not letting you use both at once. So you gotta do some research to find compatible ones (Half Life 2 works mostly, but climbing ladders is buggy)
Also, even though I'm generally a fan of Corsair, I decided to not buy their magnetic keyboard even though it would've been an obvious progression from my previous one (which was excellent for over a decade). Why? Because Corsair's iCUE software sucks, and Wooting's is not only way better, it also officially supports Linux via an AppImage!
Best wireless mechanical is: https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/reviews/asus/rog-falchion-rx... (1.7ms @ 1kHz)
Best wired mechanical would be the Corsair Air 100 I linked at 0.8ms, tied with a Field75 which is also wired.
And sure, the analog travel sensing is really cool too. You could make a keyboard do a lot of things with that, but as a dev I can't think of something I'd want my keyboard to do with that feature.
One thing I do find exciting is the potential longevity of a keyswitch with no electrical contacts except for the ones that connect the key to the circuit board.
Source: currently working on an open source hall effect sensor keyboard similar to svalboard.
Isn't USB+2.4GHz modem by nature going to introduce more latency than just USB?
Is it directly connected to wireless somehow? Pcie card or something?
I was just demonstrating how shitty the site is if you aren't using any blockers.
Could I bring my neo magnets nearmy coworker and trigger keys?
Off to buy another keyboard...
Numpads are specialist equipment now that data entry is much less common than the past, as everything is digitized/scanned.
The other advantage of a separate numpad is that you can position it for better ergonomics; a full sized keyboard usually forces either the mouse or the keyboard into a more awkward position.
I still use it every day and have for a couple years now, but it's annoying to have to have the keyboard so close to my dock.
Makes me wonder what Logitech is doing differently with their 2.4ghz dongles that makes them work so well.
