Closer Examination

The keyboard comes in a plastic wrap and a harder plastic dust cover. The dust cover is very functional and covers the front and sides fully. As such, it might come in handy if you are in a dusty office or are taking a business trip.

The keyboard itself is quite different from anything else I have seen so far, including the ErgoDox EZ I checked out previously. Both are marketed as ergonomic keyboards, but take different approaches. The Truly Ergonomic Keyboard is not split, but instead focuses on using a reduced form factor with keys such as enter, backspace, etc., in the middle of the two core regions of keys. In essence, you are meant to have one hand on each of the core regions with your thumbs to access the keys in the middle. This means having to fight with your muscle memory a lot as the enter key in the middle is not something many are used to, but this setup does a decent job once figured out. As with any keyboard that adopts a layout different from the one you are used to, you need at least two weeks to get back to normal. With this, the learning process was significantly quicker, with me getting close to my usual typing speed and accuracy within 3-4 days of regular use. The keyboard is also fully programmable, which does help, and I will cover that later. Another thing to note is that the function keys are at the top and separated, which helps as they are not usually accessed as much, and the Fn key being close-by means not having to move your fingers much.

The other defining feature is the use of angled ortholinear keys. Since there is no way to adjust this keyboard, the keys themselves are shaped and sculpted to naturally fit comfortably for most people. At the same time, the lack of adjustment means that people with broad shoulders will not be as immediately comfortable as others, and although the company says this not to be an issue if you use straight wrists I beg to differ. There is an integrated wrist rest, and it is a fairly large one occupying a good third of the unit's depth on your desk. It has two cushions made of polyurathane sponge and is quite comfortable, but for a keyboard that uses a small form factor, it seems out of place. Thankfully, it can easily be removed, as we shall see soon.


Remember when I said there is no adjustability above? I meant it. There are rubber pads on the back to help prevent sliding this keyboard around, but there are no means to tilt or tent it, which I feel is a big omission for an ergonomic keyboard. Once again, the company has addressed this in the FAQ section by saying wrist flexion, extension, and deviation are not good for the body. They are correct; however, such is only the case in extreme cases of more than 10-15° of motion. Even 3-4° of tilting or tenting can help make a keyboard a lot more comfortable for many people without incurring any short- or long-term issues. So this is something I would like to see more discussion of on their behalf.

There are a set of five dip switches which help customize the keyboard a lot without it taking a driver. The label surrounding it does a decent job of explaining how to use them, and this makes the keyboard very flexible across PC and MacOS users alike. I especially liked the built-in support for the other layouts and languages which rarely get any love from keyboard manufacturers. I can not even remember the last time a keyboard from a North American company had ISO Russian, DE, or Japanese support, for example. I did try some out to see, and they worked just fine as long as you realize that the keys may not be where you may be used to them. Oh, and there is Dvorak support built in as well. I would have liked to see Colemak included, but the programming feature will help here, at least somewhat. More on this later.

The keyboard uses a standard USB cable terminating in a male Type-A USB 2.0 connector. This makes it compatible with all the old towers in offices everywhere where USB 3.0 may not always be available, and thus works out for the intended market well enough.


The layout being unique, the keycap profile is a touch different from the OEM profile as well. There are still the same A,B,C,D,E rows with no F row here, but there is a mix of other row profiles sprinkled in, as seen above in images created by Geekhack member naz. This means that a lot of keycaps can be switched around, which will help out with the keyboard's programmability, but there are some keys with sculpted and angled keycaps of different lengths that will be hard to replace if you are used to looking down at their legends.


All but three keys have no backlighting, and thus translucence is not a factor here. I still tested them for the sake of completion, and also because there are still three that do. The keycaps are made of ABS plastic, but are fairly thick at an average wall thickness of 1.15-1.2 mm and with UV coating to help the laser-etched legends last longer without wearing off. In practice, you will still have the legends wear off in time, and finger oils will develop a shine on the keycaps. As far as most stock keycaps go, these are on the better side of average, but only just. Doubleshot legends would have been nice to see here. Some of the legends, including the blue colored ones on the top keys and the white font number keys, are silk screen printed, which is more durable but, again, not as durable as can be. The underside of the keycaps have either A,B,C,D,E or R1,R2,R3,R4,R5 on them to signify the row type corresponding to the OEM profile. Regarding translucence, or the lack thereof, it is the stem receptacle that ends up shining through rather than the legends, so it is a good thing there is no real backlighting on the keyboard with these keycaps.


The Truly Ergonomic Keyboard uses Kailh Brown mechanical switches throughout. They originally used Cherry MX Brown switches, but as with many smaller scale companies found themselves facing delays as long as a year when it came to Cherry providing them with switches. The keyboard was also susceptible to key chatter, and to the point where a lot of online reviews still mention it. They blamed Cherry for poor QC, which I do not agree with given my experience, but between a change of switch providers and new firmware, I am happy to report that those issues seem to be gone now - including on my sample. That said, I do not agree with their assessment of the Kailh switches being much better than Cherry MX ones. Kailh (Kaihua) has improved tremendously, especially with their molds that produce more consistent stems, but their quality control has been questionable. We shall see how these perform in due time. The larger keycaps use Cherry stabilizers, and the three keys that have an LED on them have it on the bottom, which just has the light shine outward at the bottom as an indicator as opposed to acting as actual backlighting.