Kinesis KB600-UK Advantage2 Keyboard - Contoured Ergonomic UK Layout Keyboard Equipped with Cherry MX Brown Mechanical Key Switches and The SmartSet Programming Engine - Black

Unsure if Amazon will accept this, since I bought my original Advantage directly from Kinesis back in 2005. But after 17 years of daily professional use, the Escape key finally died. To be fair that's a LOT of keypresses from constant vi use. An expensive keyboard, but I can't complain at the longevity. I've used dozens of ergo keyboards over the years ... and I still always come back to the Advantage. It's the best designed, and is incredibly robst (survived the coffee "incident" of 2007 - the moulded body comfortable holds an entire large mug, if you're curious). Lots of others seem like they should be better - the Keyboardio and Ergodox come close, but they're just not as comfortable for sustained use.

The keyboard feels very natural and requires minimal arm movement. To use it efficiently you really need to be able to touch type without looking at the keys. It takes some time getting used to the layout and switching to for example using only the right hand thumb to press space bar. A slightly disappointing that there were no macOS key caps included, although Kinesis tech support offered to send me a set for free if I paid for the shipping cost, so if it's important for you - get in touch with the company.

For an emacs user like me, this keyboard makes it super-hard to press alt+ctrl+shift+5 for query-replace-regexp because alt, ctrl, shift are now thumb keys, and I only have 2 thumbs (but i can press these 4 keys with my left hand only on a plain qwerty keyboard). Just alt+ctrl is difficult because it requires 2 thumbs, or hitting both keys with one thumb which is even more difficult. The locations of thumb buttons are such that one needs to extend the thumb farthest to reach ctrl or alt, which requires an elbow move and rotating the wrist outwards, which displaces your typing fingers off the target key, defeating the main purpose and benefit of this keyboard. I have fairly long fingers and use only the largest screen size phones. I have observed 4 people loving and enjoying the keyboard, but for me its thumb keys are impossible to reach and use without repositioning the main typing 4 fingers. Build quality-wise, the keyboard looks, feels and sounds like a cheap piece of plastic built in early 2000s. It shouldn't cost more than £100, which is still generous for it. Had to return it.

The manufacturer is in America so it's hard to implement the warranty. They disregard UK laws and expect customers to pay all postage costs to get their faulty hardware mended. They'll post me a new motherboard but I'd have to pay import duty as well as postage. We are still discussing options but right now I'm still holding a £500 brick and why did such a ludicrously expensive device die after 4 months if not because of cheap components or inept design? While this discussion has been going on my muscle memory has converted back to expecting a normal keyboard and I can't face relearning this layout so I'd rather just have a refund.