Let us address the elephant in the room, shall we? The review sample, as with every other ErgoDox EZ Shine manufactured, costs a whopping $325. The base $205 model is without keycaps, in case you had some already from an older keyboard that worked or wanted new ones entirely, and a fully functioning keyboard costs $240 with the two accessories costing $30 each or $55 together. The Shine thus has a minimum of $295 and the extra $30 is for the LEDs and driver lighting support. You can definitely work with the $240 tier keyboard, but I strongly recommend getting the Tilt/Tent kit at the very minimum.

The reason it is expensive is fairly simple- the individual components cost that much. Before the ErgoDox EZ was a reality, people were spending $200-250 on the individual parts (and they still do), and then solder/assemble everything together. The ErgoDox EZ does this for you and ends up charging nearly nothing extra for it as a result of the higher volume sales. So the product price itself is more of a component cost than anything else, owing to the small niche of customers that are interested in this. There are other ergonomic and split keyboards in the market, and we will be taking a look at some in the days to come, so the competition is high in a small market. As such, the only way to reduce costs now would be to design the product differently from the ground up.

This is where I feel ErgoDox EZ needs to go next- they have, in the past two years, established themselves as a brand which fulfills promises in a timely manner. With the ErgoDox design getting more and more dated as time passes, especially concerning the connectors used, perhaps they can work on a rev 2 of the keyboard or a new product line entirely at lower costs. A $150 ergo/split keyboard design is going to attract a lot more customers than a $250 one, especially with the ground work already done on the firmware and configurator.

But if that is not possible anytime soon, or you simply do not want to wait then I completely understand. What started off as some curiosity about the product has now become a believer of the concept- even after what was possibly the steepest learning curve for any keyboard so far. On the plus side, this did make the use of other similar keyboards easier so it is a one-time thing. If you are willing to commit time, and money, then the ErgoDox EZ will justify itself in the long run. In fact, if I were not a keyboard reviewer, I would very likely commit to the ErgoDox EZ with a Colemak key layout for all my typing henceforth. But QWERTY remains the go-to universally, and I will stick with it thus. Even there, as seen on the previous page, my fingers moved less and easier here than on a standard layout keyboard and as I type this review on this very keyboard I feel more and more likely I should have purchased this myself earlier. It just so happens that you need 2-3 weeks with this to make a decision either way yourself and unfortunately that generally means having to buy this first anyway. Hopefully this review has helped make a more informed decision for those undecided, and at the very least made others aware of the product.