The Kinesis Advantage 2… a Developer’s Perspective
First off, this is not a paid promotion by Kinesis, and I did not receive a free keyboard from them to test. Although considering how many of their keyboards I have bought at each company I go to, I would not mind a hand me out or two ;-).
Background — TLDR
I’d say I’m a pretty efficient typer and coder. I’m big on hotkeys and always am trying to improve my workflow. Sometime in college, probably after playing too many video games, I started to get wrist pain on and off. That was cured by switching mouses between hands to give the other hand a break. After I joined the workforce and switching mouse hands stopped working, I switched over to trackballs, the first being a Logitech Trackman Wheel. I was pretty proficient with that mouse — good enough to reach Platinum in Starcraft 2. Since then, I’ve switched between the Logitech Marble Mouse, the Logitech M570, and most recently, the Logitech MX Ergo.
When I got into iOS development around the iPhone OS 3 days, I was typing on an Apple Magic Keyboard, the little Bluetooth one. That was fine for a few years until the wrist pain started creeping up again. A coworker introduced me to the Kinesis Freestyle 2 for Mac, which I instantly loved. It felt just like typing on a Mac keyboard but with some extras, like the ability to separate and tilt your keyboard. For a few years, this keyboard has worked out for me and for anyone I knew who was starting to have wrist pain, that was the keyboard I recommended to them. I even recently paid the money to get the Kinesis Freestyle Edge so I could use a mechanical version of my favorite keyboard at home. That keyboard, unfortunately, is not as good as their Kinesis Freestyle 2 for Mac since although you can remap your keys, the other function keys don’t really work as it does on the Bluetooth version. For a keyboard that is that expensive, I would have thought those things would have been ironed out and also would have included extra keycaps to replace Windows’ specific keys like Print Screen, Scroll Lock, or Pause Break to something else. Even including a command or option keycap would have been nice.
My wrist pains were gone for a while. I invested in a nice home setup with a sit/stand desk, and I even spent the money to buy an Aeron chair a few years back. At work, sit/stand desks are everywhere, no special doctor note needed. I workout every day, I eat pretty well, I chase two young kiddos around the house, and then one night I woke up and both my wrists were super achy. I started to ask myself why. Was it the Chris Hemsworth’s Thor workout of 67 pull-ups (I didn’t actually do 67 pull-ups, it was more like 67 attempts)? Was it the swim I did the day before? Or is it just old age at a whopping age of 37? I went back and forth on what it could be, and have always wondered if the super expensive Kinesis Advantage 2 was “worth it” and also if I could get used to it. For those that are not familiar with it, it has a very unique layout with its design to have more typing work put into your stronger thumbs than your weaker pinky fingers, and also has a curved well design that limits the amount of movement your fingers have to make. So I asked myself if I really “needed” it yet. Well, another week went by and my wrists started to feel better. I went on vacation and they were feeling great, probably because I wasn’t typing. Then on my Kinesis Freestyle 2 that I tried to put at a good ergonomic height on my trip, once I started typing, I started to feel the pain again. So that day, I figured, “ok 60 days return policy if this keyboard doesn’t work out. I’m out the shipping cost, but if it does work, $370 to be able to continue coding which I love to do… totally worth it. This is my health I’m talking about here!”
One of the biggest concerns I had regarding purchasing the Kinesis Advantage 2 is, could I be just as efficient and productive with it. Looking at the layout, the wells seemed like it would take a little getting used to, but not unbearable. From the accounts I could find, it seemed like people got used to it within a couple weeks. What I was worried about the most were the keystrokes we developers do to navigate around Xcode. Some of my favorite hotkeys to get around are pretty simple:
- command + option + enter (to open up assistant editor)
- command + enter (to close assistant editor)
- command + ctrl + click (to jump to definition)
- option + shift + arrow key (to highlight code)
- option + arrow key OR command + arrow key (to navigate around the editor)
These actions are really not that special on a normal keyboard, but I do them daily in order to be efficient. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do those actions successfully on this keyboard. Unfortunately, I could not find a lot of information for developers who used this keyboard. I did meet a couple people at Gophercon 2016 that swore by it, but then I found another developer’s blog who said he couldn’t get used to it in his workflow: https://likewise.am/2017/07/16/review-the-failure-of-my-kinesis-advantage-experiment/.
So without further ado, here is how this mobile developer faired…
Baseline
Although typing is not entirely accurate as to what we developers do on a daily basis since we use a lot of slashes, curly braces, heavy use of brackets if you are still writing Objective-C, and our navigation through code, I needed some sort of baseline. There are three things I wanted to measure before I started using my Advantage 2 as my full-time keyboard
- developer productivity
- wrist pain
- typing speed
For developer productivity, I’m going to consider this keyboard a success if I can be as efficient as I am on a Freestyle 2 keyboard before my 60 days are over.
For wrist pain, well at this point, I just got back from a week of PTO and after my first day back at work on my Freestyle 2, I am starting to feel the aches again. If I stop feeling the wrist aches, this will be $370 well spent.
And lastly, typing speed. I took a few typing tests with my Freestyle 2 at www.typingtest.com. Here were my initial results (WPM = words per minute):
Aesop’s Fables: Typing Speed 111 WPM, Errors 0, Adjusted Speed 111 WPM
Rules of Baseball: Typing Speed 104 WPM, Errors 3, Adjusted Speed 101 WPM
Tigers in the Wild: Typing Speed 103 WPM, Errors 1, Adjusted Speed 102 WPM
Day 1
Hour 1: After just receiving the Advantage 2 and maybe typing for less than 30 minutes, I wanted to see how hard it was to use. I took the same Aesop’s Fables in the first 30 minutes of using the keyboard and I got a horrendous 18 WPM, but hey, 0 errors!
Hour 3: After a few hours of using the keyboard typing this blog post and chatting with friends, I retook the test and surprisingly, my results were a lot better:
Aesop’s Fables: Typing Speed 82 WPM, Errors 4, Adjusted Speed 78 WPM
Week 1
After a few days of typing, you definitely do get used to the basic typing. For anyone that is not a developer and is looking for an ergonomic keyboard, this one is as easy to use as any other keyboard for basic wordsmithing.
The workflow hotkeys are still taking some time to get used to. The everyday usage of {} and [] are especially hard keys to hit accurately in my first week of using this keyboard.
The other hard key to getting used to for me is the tilda, ~, key. I use that often when I have multiple windows of a single app open and I want to cycle through them.
When I type an incorrect word or words, I often use the hotkeys option + shift + left/right arrow to highlight those words and then hit backspace to get rid of them. Because of where the arrow keys are, this key combination has proven to be very difficult.
I’m a big fan of the hotkey, ctrl + w in the terminal that deletes one word back. Since this keyboard lets you bind macros, and since I do not use the End key, I mapped that key to do option + backspace which serves as a simple way to delete one word backwards without having to hunt around for those arrow keys.
If you are using backticks, `, a lot in your workflow like writing Markdown documents, it’s the same place as tilda which is a bit awkward.
As developers, we are often using the esc key. I personally find the escape key hard to use since it’s so small. If I were only using it in Vim to change modes, I probably could live with it. But I do use esc elsewhere like when I don’t want the code completion that Xcode is currently showing me, or to jump words backward or forwards in terminal, I’m often using esc + b and esc + f. I don’t think it’s very easy to hit those key combinations with the current escape key so I had to remap it to page down.
For pain management, after the first day, I wanted to drink the kool-aid and thought I did feel better. But after the other days of using the keyboard, I have not noticed any significant pain relief. I understand that this keyboard is not a medical device and is going to cure my problems, but I did wonder if I would find relief right away. I’m still crossing my fingers and hope that in a few weeks, I will be feeling better. And here are my typing results after the first week:
Aesop’s Fables: Typing Speed 103 WPM, Errors 1, Adjusted Speed 102 WPM
Rules of Baseball: Typing Speed 108 WPM, Errors 1, Adjusted Speed 107 WPM
Tigers in the Wild: Typing Speed 103 WPM, Errors 3, Adjusted Speed 100 WPM
Week 2
After using this keyboard for the second week, my efficiency is improving. The arrow keys and hitting the {} and [] correctly every time prove to be the most difficult.
The pain in my wrists is slowly getting better as well. And here are the typing results. I’m a bit faster surprisingly, but with more errors.
Aesop’s Fables: Typing Speed 118 WPM, Errors 4, Adjusted Speed 114 WPM
Rules of Baseball: Typing Speed 115 WPM, Errors 3, Adjusted Speed 112 WPM
Tigers in the Wild: Typing Speed 102 WPM, Errors 3, Adjusted Speed 99 WPM
Week 3
After the third week, the developer-centric tasks are definitely starting to come together. There are still errors hitting keys, but less of them. I do find myself having to stop and think more about what keys I need to hit, mostly telling my fingers where those keys are that are different than your standard layout and then hit them, but it does not seem to take much extra time at this point if any. The pain is also definitely better than it was a few weeks ago.
Aesop’s Fables: Typing Speed 120 WPM, Errors 5, Adjusted Speed 115 WPM
Rules of Baseball: Typing Speed 112 WPM, Errors 3, Adjusted Speed 109 WPM
Tigers in the Wild: Typing Speed 107 WPM, Errors 3, Adjusted Speed 104 WPM
Week 4
Aesop’s Fables: Typing Speed 124 WPM, Errors 6, Adjusted Speed 118 WPM
Rules of Baseball: Typing Speed 120 WPM, Errors 6, Adjusted Speed 114 WPM
Tigers in the Wild: Typing Speed 111 WPM, Errors 2, Adjusted Speed 109 WPM
I’ve used this keyboard for a month now. If I were not a developer, and just spent time writing documents, this keyboard is very easy to adapt to. As a developer, the arrow keys, combined with the modifier keys (cmd, ctrl, alt) as well as commonly-used developer keys (=, [], {}, +, etc) are definitely more troublesome. That being said, after using the keyboard for a month, hitting those keys correctly, or correctly the second time, isn’t “that” hard. It’s definitely something a developer can get used to. I also have modified some of my workflows on the keyboard and I would not say my productivity took a hit. With a few of your own modifications, I’m confident that you can find your own workflow to make this keyboard work for you.
I’ve definitely found the pain getting better in my wrists personally, more than the previous Kinesis split keyboards have given me so I will most likely keep this keyboard past the 60 days. Knowing where it is ergonomically friendly to type is a big win for me. There really isn’t a choice on that compared to the split keyboards.
I have traveled with this keyboard and it is big, but it’s “ok.” Typing with it on your lap while you are away from your desk setup is ok as well. The thumb clusters do provide a natural way to type.
A couple downsides I do want to point out however are:
- getting proficient with this keyboard means that you will not be proficient with other keyboards. Because backspace is hit with the left thumb, the few times I did not bring my keyboard to a meeting, I found myself hitting the left command button when I was trying to hit backspace. You will need to bring this keyboard with you if you don’t want people to see you fumbling around while presenting
- the keyboard is wired. I believe Kinesis does this in order for their SmartSet technology and the V-Drive to work. The V-Drive is a mini storage drive where your settings, like key remappings, macros, and other settings are stored. I think this is also needed in order for the hookup to the foot pedals to work, assuming you also have the extra foot pedals. Me personally, I wish this keyboard was available in a Bluetooth version, similar to the Kinesis Freestyle 2 Blue for Mac, and you could use a mini SD card to store your profile settings. I would be ok with just editing a config file stored on a mini SD card if I could go wireless with multiple Bluetooth profiles like their Freestyle 2 lineup. Since I do not use a foot pedal, being wired is not a necessity for me. Or, maybe they could create a Bluetooth version like that, but also use an optional cable for when it needed to be charged and/or use the foot pedal. I’m not a hardware guy, so not really sure if that’s possible
- the keyboard is mechanical and is loud
- for a $370 keyboard, the cord could be of higher quality like in the Freestyle Edge keyboard
- you just paid $370 for a keyboard… There are better deals out there, but in order to get the 60 day money-back guarantee, you have to order directly from Kinesis
Layout
Here are my current remappings in the keyboard:
[home]>[rctrl]
[lctrl]>[rwin]
[pup]>[lalt]
[pdown]>[escape]
{end}>{-lalt}{bspace}{+lalt}Conclusion
If you are a developer, have heard about the Kinesis Advantage 2 and wondered if you could get used to the keyboard, I think you definitely can. It just takes some time to retrain some of those finger muscles. I wouldn’t swap this keyboard in for your normal keyboard if you have a release coming up ;-).
