In this fun video I look at the different ways your fingers move on ortholinear (sometimes called grid or matrix) keyboards versus a normal staggered keyboard layout. It’s quite a revealing video and I discovered some interesting differences that I hadn’t even noticed prior to making the video.

The keyboards I use to compare these layouts in this video are the Anne Pro 2 (widely available from importers and Aliexpress etc) and my new keyboard the ZSA Planck EZ which you can get here: https://ergodox-ez.com/pages/planck

The difference is pretty interesting and you can quickly see just how crazy the staggered keyboard layout is.

For one thing you can see in the video how equivalent movements like moving to the centre column on the top row result in asymmetrical movements with each hand.

It’s also apparent how a staggered (normal) keyboard layout is actually just a skeuomorphic design idea. Old fashioned typewriters needed to have staggered keys to allow the levers to reach under the next row, hence the keys were staggered. Now that we don’t need this I think it’s time to move on!

I hope you enjoy the video – check out my introduction to mechanical keyboards here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVOg1ekfUQ8

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