A ZSA Moonlander review (the pros and cons of my ergo journey) Part-1

Image from https://zsa.io/moonlander

After a presentation by a colleague at the company I work (Michael Brown) about keyboard ergonomics, I decided to dive head first into the world of split keyboards. I have long suffered with headaches, and anything that can help to alleviate that is welcomed.

Michael had brought along his Ergodoz EZ and one of his Moonlanders, and I was instantly struck with how radical they looked. My inner geek went a little FOMO and I had to dig into this world of wonder.

Image from https://ergodox-ez.com/

First port of call? eBay. And on my first search there were no less than 5 for sale at the time, so I put them all in my watch list to guage the market and it’s appetite for them. Ranging in price from £200-280 I was a little hesitant to take the plunge, and they all dwindled away until the remaining one at £280 sold. I waited patiently and one that had visible case cracks appeared for a reasonable price, and I went for it! In the end I spent £198 plus postage.

Excited, was not the word. I was soon to be sitting in a very comfortable position, and being able to type for long periods without getting wrist, neck or back problems.

The keyboard arrived, and it was ‘as described’. Spot on. I got to work setting everything up, and starting flat.

First Impressions

“Oh man, what have I done?”

The learning curve is steep (the forums say), but in reality it didn’t take me long to get used to the feel of the keyboard, it’s split nature, the columnar layout and the layers. Before long my monkey type was roughly close to where my Apple Wireless keyboard speed was.

You can definitely feel that your shoulders are in a much more natural position, and that your fingers aren’t moving in an unnatural way. Your wrists feel ‘free’ so to speak, and aren’t twisted trying to follow a layout first developed in the 1870’s (there will be more on this in a future article).

It’s worth noting that I was starting to use proper typing patterns too, I had decades of bad movement patterns, like not using my pinkie finger at all, to using my left index finger for the Y key. This was probably the most difficult bit.

Second Impressions

“Ohhh, I kinda get it now”

So, once you’ve got over the initial shock of the split nature of the keyboard and the columns, you start to realise the simplicity of it all. It becomes a more natural position and you start to feel ‘at home’ so to speak.

Then you start to dig deeper into what the keyboard can do for you. And the following became apparent:

1. Layers
2. Layer/Per key Colours
3. Automated shift
4. Macros
5. Tenting

My challenge was to do the first 2 of these at the same time. The Moonlander comes with layers pre-baked, and they are activated with certain keys around the keyboard. It does cause a few issues with auto-shift later down the road, but a quick layout change and you’re back up and running.

Adding layers can be a bit of a nightmare, I won’t beat about the bush here. It means that a key that was once an F, is now f, { and 8, depending on what layer you’re in. This is 100% customisable, so very few layouts are the same.

What are the advantages though?

Speed and reduction of movement. Having a numpad under the keys you normally type with mean that you hardly ever need to move your palms, and that makes a HUGE difference to day to day typing. I will leave a link at the bottom of the article to Ben Vallack’s video on YouTube about his 36 key Moonlander setup that essentially removes the use for all of the outer keys on the keyboard. If you’re not moving your palm around, you’re using much less energy to type, and not contorting your wrists to reach keys.

Are there any downsides?

Yes, I’m afraid there is. I have now owned 3 Moonlanders (a black one for a very short period of time, and 2 white ones), and build quality of the earlier models hasn’t been the best, so buying a second hand one can be risky in that you’re likely to find case cracking where there are screws for tenting points.

Please be aware though, that this has been addressed by ZSA, and the newer models have bracing in place to reduce the likelihood of case cracking. So a little advice if you buy an early model on eBay, be gentle. The case can’t handle 75NM of torque on the screws to tent up, I haven’t got my torque wrench out, but I bet it’s a tenth of that figure.

As you can see, the previous owner repaired this keyboard before I bought it. I have since had to repair this one again, but it holds well and still performs just as it should. Worth remembering, this is user error.

Summary

Should you buy a Moonlander, or a split keyboard in general? Hell yes, it’s been almost life changing for me. My shoulders are now free, I can go as wide as I want with the keyboard halves, and still be able to type quite easily. I find my hands will move closer and closer together as I type, and my body finds the position it’s happy with.

There will be a second part to this article covering other aspects of the Moonlander like key colouring, auto-shift, tenting and Macros

A third part to this article will be the exporation of the Colemak-DH layout (all of the above has been about 10% of my journey, Colemak has by far been the hardest)

A fourth article will cover my journey into building my own keyboard using a Corne v2 setup, plus custom switches (this was super cool).

The final article will cover what I plan on doing next in this crazy journey.

Thanks for taking a read, have fun everyone.