Vortex 10 Keyboard

[VSG]

Vortexgear is 10 years old and wants to celebrate with us by releasing the Vortex 10. It builds upon everything the company has learned, using their 60% Poker keyboards as a base and throwing a Taiwanese kitchen sink at it with a polycarbonate case, side lighting, hot-swap switches, and extended user controls.

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[Chrispy_]

While I'm sure that a 60% keyboard like this will have niche appeal, I'm not actually sure who or what that niche is.

Compact TKL layouts that don't need configuration before they're usable, and don't require a period of retraining/adjustment to competently use aren't a lot bigger than this, so I don't think size is the USP for the target niche.

Genuine question, and not masked criticism, what is the target audience and why would they want this particular layout rather than, say, the integrated TKL like what you get on a 13" laptop? At least with those you get cursor keys instead of a duplicate Windows key and conext menu key. Does the spacebar really need to be so big in Votex's 60% layout? There's a worn spot on my laptop keyboard that proves my thumbs hit it only in the very centre, so I guess I could use a spacebar that's less than half the size of even a laptop spacebar and not even notice....

For me, that row of half-height F-keys on the lenovo laptop keyboard adds almost zero extra space, provides room for an insert, delete, and break/pause key - all obvious improvements over having to use a Fn combination. When trying to reduce the footprint/size of a keyboard, the dimension that matters the most is the width of the keyboard. A couple of extra mm top to bottom isn't going to make a difference to anyone....

Additionally the lack of arrow keys which match up perfectly to PgUp/Dn and Home/End means that I couldn use this for coding, or in fact any serious amount of typing.

So the target audience is, uh, someone who doesn't code, edit lots of text, or use F-keys. What does that leave that I've missed?

60%, especially this particular 60% layout, seems like a terrible idea and is not for me - but what this review has done is prompted me to take a look at VortexGear's other keyboards, because dumb size and layout aside, this keyboard is beautiful and well made. I'm using a similar-keycapped CM QF Stealth with Cherry Browns and love it, but it's the better part of a decade old now and the soft-touch plastics have long since lost their matte finish and it's starting to feel a little tired.

 

[wickeddoc]

I wanted to give some insight into why you might want to switch to the Vortex layout.

I'm a full-time developer and switched to Vortex Poker keyboards about 6 years ago and don't see myself ever switching to another layout ever again.

The Vortex layout allows me to never have to move my fingers of my "default" position. No need to reach to the side to access the arrow- or PgUp/PgDn keys. Because all of these are located "inside" the normal Layout. Here's another picture of the layout which illustrates this a little bit better:

One change that I did was swap the Fn and Win Keys, as I'm primarily using Linux and never need the Win keys, so I've moved this one out of the way to the right. This allows me to easily toggle the Layout using the Fn key with my left thumb. While holding down the Fn key I now have the F-keys available in the first row of keys and the arrow keys are now available on i, j, k, l while PgUp/PgDn are mapped to u and o.
As an easter egg you also have Volume-Down/Up/Mute on Fn-s, d, f

I agree that it will definitely take some time of getting used to, but once the layout was stored in muscle memory I was able to attain a typing speed which I was never able to achieve with any other layout, yet your mileage may vary.

To each his own, but I can honestly say that switching to Vortex was a life-changer for me. So much, that I even created a new account on this site just to clarify this

 

[Chrispy_]

I wanted to give some insight into why you might want to switch to the Vortex layout.

I'm a full-time developer and switched to Vortex Poker keyboards about 6 years ago and don't see myself ever switching to another layout ever again.

The Vortex layout allows me to never have to move my fingers of my "default" position. No need to reach to the side to access the arrow- or PgUp/PgDn keys. Because all of these are located "inside" the normal Layout. Here's another picture of the layout which illustrates this a little bit better:

View attachment 183364

One change that I did was swap the Fn and Win Keys, as I'm primarily using Linux and never need the Win keys, so I've moved this one out of the way to the right. This allows me to easily toggle the Layout using the Fn key with my left thumb. While holding down the Fn key I now have the F-keys available in the first row of keys and the arrow keys are now available on i, j, k, l while PgUp/PgDn are mapped to u and o.
As an easter egg you also have Volume-Down/Up/Mute on Fn-s, d, f

I agree that it will definitely take some time of getting used to, but once the layout was stored in muscle memory I was able to attain a typing speed which I was never able to achieve with any other layout, yet your mileage may vary.

To each his own, but I can honestly say that switching to Vortex was a life-changer for me. So much, that I even created a new account on this site just to clarify this

Thanks for the detailed response, genuinely interesting - and why I asked.

How much do you use arrow keys? For me, most of my arrow-key usage is already with either Shift or Ctrl, so I'm guessing it would take me a while to adjust to using a second modifier key.

I guess my personal dislike of non-standard layouts is because I use a lot of different keyboards every week (less during COVID, to be fair) and therefore I cannot control "the normal keyboard" since most of them aren't mine. It's not helpful for me to retrain myself for any non-standard layout because I'm forced to use standard layouts most of the time and muscle memory is a powerful incentive.

 

[VSG]

Thanks for the detailed response, genuinely interesting - and why I asked.

How much do you use arrow keys? For me, most of my arrow-key usage is already with either Shift or Ctrl, so I'm guessing it would take me a while to adjust to using a second modifier key.

I guess my personal dislike of non-standard layouts is because I use a lot of different keyboards every week (less during COVID, to be fair) and therefore I cannot control "the normal keyboard" since most of them aren't mine. It's not helpful for me to retrain myself for any non-standard layout because I'm forced to use standard layouts most of the time and muscle memory is a powerful incentive.

The 60% layout is not for everyone, and yet just right for many others as said above. In addition, I will address why companies are not cramming in more keys in the same space similar to a laptop keyboard. The answer is as simple as physical space requirements for the individual mechanical keys. The space bar is not a deal breaker here, however, with several small form factor keyboards indeed adopting a shorter space bar (or even two smaller ones!), but they quickly fell out of favor because of one thing: aftermarket keycap compatibility. As much as function and ergonomics is key in such form factors, the vast majority of buyers want to customize their keyboards with specific keycap/sets which means having to conform to a certain dimension for the various keys.

Spoiler

I wanted to give some insight into why you might want to switch to the Vortex layout.

I'm a full-time developer and switched to Vortex Poker keyboards about 6 years ago and don't see myself ever switching to another layout ever again.

The Vortex layout allows me to never have to move my fingers of my "default" position. No need to reach to the side to access the arrow- or PgUp/PgDn keys. Because all of these are located "inside" the normal Layout. Here's another picture of the layout which illustrates this a little bit better:

View attachment 183364

One change that I did was swap the Fn and Win Keys, as I'm primarily using Linux and never need the Win keys, so I've moved this one out of the way to the right. This allows me to easily toggle the Layout using the Fn key with my left thumb. While holding down the Fn key I now have the F-keys available in the first row of keys and the arrow keys are now available on i, j, k, l while PgUp/PgDn are mapped to u and o.
As an easter egg you also have Volume-Down/Up/Mute on Fn-s, d, f

I agree that it will definitely take some time of getting used to, but once the layout was stored in muscle memory I was able to attain a typing speed which I was never able to achieve with any other layout, yet your mileage may vary.

To each his own, but I can honestly say that switching to Vortex was a life-changer for me. So much, that I even created a new account on this site just to clarify this

Welcome to TPU

 

[wickeddoc]

I guess my personal dislike of non-standard layouts is because I use a lot of different keyboards every week (less during COVID, to be fair) and therefore I cannot control "the normal keyboard" since most of them aren't mine. It's not helpful for me to retrain myself for any non-standard layout because I'm forced to use standard layouts most of the time and muscle memory is a powerful incentive.

As this layout requires a lot of getting used-to and if you're switching often between different keyboards I understand that this might not be ideal for you.

I'm lucky that my boss allows me to bring my own keyboard, and my colleagues don't mind the Cherry clicky-sounds, so I invested in a second keyboard which I can use that the office. Which obviously makes things a whole lot easier.