Bye K2

I was bit by the mevhanical Keyboard bug almost a year ago. I was really excited to receive my Keychron K2 on 19th November 2020. I was waiting t to buy it for more than 6 months but was out of stock on the Indian vendor websites then and to get my hands on the keyboard I had bought it from a vendor in Singapore which fortuantely shipped to India. I had to pay a about 34% of it’s cost as customs 🥲.

That was my most costliest purchase of an item for my computer and it seconds my custom mechanical keyboard which I built in November 2021. It holds a very special place in my heart and I’m proud of myself to have earned the money to buy a Keychron K2.

Why????

Why did I ditch my K2?

The K2 is a good keyboard but it lacks something I want, Configurability. I’m kinda being a hypocrite by saying this since I use a Mac as my daily driver but atleast I can configure that other than the RGB of the K2. Plus it was becoming a defacto for almost every Indian Tech guy on Twitter and Youtube. At the time when I bought my K2, I was one of the few owners to show off a K2 among my peers and now it seemed like something everyone knew about. I still love the K2 for it’s colours and form factor.

What did I switch to?

I bought the PCB and switches and soldered together an ErgoDash. ErgoDash is a ergo split mechanical keyboard. It has 35 keys per side and per key single color backlight and an RGB underglow. I use a combination of Gateron Yellows, Blues and Browns. It’s not the best combos but it fits perfectly for me. Plus It’s really really really configurable. It uses QMK as it’s firmware and it is boosted with the VIA firmware for ergodash and the VIA configurator boosts this flexibility.

Also it supports layers which is an added advantage compared to the K2. I wish I could hack the K2 and run it QMK, sadly no option at the time of writing this post.

Honestly typing on the ergodash is hard work since I’m not used to this split layout and I have to reteach my muscle memory to adjust to new key mappings. My WPM is now at 20 from the 50 I used to get from the K2 and that is one thing. I need to get a palm rest for both the halves and a travelling bag for both the halves. These are attainable and these tradeoffs are something I can live with. 😉