deskthority

Please vote for your winner of the award for the Best ergonomic input device 2013.

By voting in this category you can win a Minila from The Keyboard Company.

This is the final round. See the first round and second round for reference.

The official nominees are:

Cherry G80-5000
The Cherry G80-5000 was the first and only ergonomic mechanical keyboard produced and designed by Cherry. Available in the 90ties, it is now a rare and expensive collector's item.


Cherry G80-5000 with keycaps removed, showing MX Brown switches, which were invented for this keyboard.

DataHand
Winner of the 2011 award, the DataHand sports perhaps the most radical ergonomic design, and people pay large amounts of money for one at auction sites and marketplaces.


A DataHand Professional II, with keycap removed.

ErgoDox
Winner of the 2012 award, the ErgoDox is a DIY keyboard project initiated by Dox. The keyboard is split into two halves, each having a columnar layout. It's an amazing project.


ErgoDox constructed by litster.

Kinesis Advantage
The Advantage is the latest incarnation of Kinesis' Contoured keyboard, first introduced in 1992. It has Cherry MX switches and a cupped, ergonomic design.


Kinesis Advantage in black.

Tipro keyboard systems
The Tipro keyboard range provides a wide variety of Cherry MX based, typically non-staggered modules, for extra keys or alternative layouts.


A Tipro dual 8x8 split keyboard project.

The Ergoplus is nice but more a collectors item than seriously ergonomic. The Datahand would likely get my vote but already won back then, the Kinesis lacks adjustability and the tipro...not so ergonimic. I like community projects, so the ergodox gets my vote.

The Kinesis has not the adjustability of a Tipro but it is almost fully programmable.

I'm voting for the only one that isn't Cherry MX.

Although the ErgoDox would be second place.

I think that the ErgoDox is a big disappointment. The distance to the thumb keys and the minimal column offsets isn't very good.
Then various bugs in the PCBs and plates that have been made, and I haven't seen that Massdrop or anyone else making ErgoDox parts ever fixing those bugs before starting another run, and then running even more runs, several months after the bugs have been discovered.
Massdrop had offered extra PCBs but no component kits, and some components were not too easy to source on their own (I/O expander, TRRS connector) without ordering from different vendors, or ordering from vendors that charge a lot for shipping to Europe.
Then, for me personally, Massdrop overstating the value on the customs form (which I paid anyway because of the local postal service had withheld that information from me).

No. I voted for Kinesis. That is what the ErgoDox wants to be when it grows up..

webwit wrote: Cherry G80-5000 with keycaps removed, showing MX Brown switches, which were invented for this keyboard.

A Kinesis rep on Geekhack claimed that Cherry would have made the Brown switches because of a request from Kinesis, and therefore I added that to the Wiki. http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=371 ... #msg706886
Well.. Difficult to tell the motivation of the Cherry engineers... but the Kinesis was introduced in '92, while the G80-5000 was introduced in '94 (according to the Wiki).

The vote closes on Monday 9 December at 20:00 UTC. Vote now!

The two nominees with currently the most votes are (in alphabetical order):