This is a skill and it isn’t free. First, you have to learn the contact height with all your fingers for all angles. Second, the balance between the weight of your fingers and the key resistance must be fine enough, or you get fatigue in finger-extending muscles, or misclicks, or misrepeats. Topre even made RealForce variants to address this specific issue. I’m sure it’s not so hard and you mastered it, but an average random person has to try few keyboards before finding the one that fits and each try has a learning curve, and the last ones can be expensive (“Oh, it seems that I want speed non-mx tactile 55g with orings and media keys, but there are only three models, one doesn’t ship to my region, and the other two are too high based, one pretty overpriced”). That’s why mechanical keyboard guys often have a handful of them, cause all are nice but only one really fits.

The dexterity required to only press the key (roughly) half way to the actuation point is just as strenuous; you might as well be bottoming them out every time. I prefer extreme short travel keyboards for this reason. Quieter, shorter key travel distance, much less fatigue.

In my experience, you hypothesis is wrong.

> The dexterity required to only press the key (roughly) half way to the actuation point is just as strenuous

You don't have to only press the key to the actuation point, you have to press it at least to it. You can then stop anywhere between that point and the bottom, which is easier to do with long travel keys.

In my experience this works best with lighter keys (requiring less force). I found this out when messing around with a cheaper mechanical keyboard[0] by realising that I had just stopped pressing the keys all the way. I wasn't even looking to "type better" or whatever, I was just curious about all the mech hype and was trying one out.

Getting back to membrane keyboards, in my case a 2013 MBP, was actually painful because the keys actually require more force to move past the rest position, but they then become very soft, so all the force becomes speed which then stops all of a sudden when I hit the bottom. To me, it's practically impossible to not bottom out the MBP keyboard because of the short travel. Also, since I got used to pressing the keys with too little force, I find I actually miss a lot of the keys, which had never happened before.

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[0] Drevo Gramr with Outemu Brown switches

Can you show me an example of what you mean by shorter key travel keyboards? I think I'm in the same boat as you.

You can check the Keychron K3. These use low profile switches have 3mm max travel distance.

> The "expensive" part isn't even true in all cases.

Being a cheapskate but wanting a mechanical keyboard with swappable switches, I bought a Redragon K552 off Amazon (88 key version) for $28. The Outemu reds are fine, but I swapped the alphabet and control keys for browns.

I have no regrets.

I bought a Tecware Phantom 104-key keyboard with outemu browns for $50. Per-key RGB and came with replacement switches - no regrets here either.

Over the years I’ve become convinced that not “bottoming out” is a fetish that most people should not be trying to adopt.

“Bottoming out” is just “typing”. You press the key. Find a keyboard that feels good when you press the keys.