Having carried a Kinesis Advantage many times in luggage, I personally appreciate this is easier to pack and won't miss the function keys much / at all.

The advantage360 loses the function key row but does add two interior columns, similar to the moonlander's.

I'm less concerned with the F keys but I'd miss the Esc key in the upper-left, and the printscrn and volume buttons.

I don't put anything in the vast middle space of my advantage2 but I appreciate the single piece design and the physical cable. Not sure if the advantage360 is right for me either.

I have a Moonlander and mapped the key that typically in the caps lock position (just to the left of 'A') to escape, and - depending on if I'm in mac or windows mode - ⌘-W/Ctrl-W on double-tap and ⌘-Q/Alt-F4 on tap-hold. Makes it really easy to close modals, windows, and applications.

There are 4 buttons in the center columns that have no use on the default layer — they are simply bound to 1, 2, 3, and 4. You could use two of them for dedicated volume keys and one of them for print screen.

They do also offer a base Advantage 360 that is wired and the two pieces are connected with a usb-c cable. The downside is it does not have ZMK, but their own smartset firmware.

> I'd miss the Esc key in the upper-left

When the keyboard lets your thumb reach 2-3 buttons each, you get to use the thumb more, which allows using the pinky finger less. (Which is nice, since the pinky finger is weaker than the thumb).

I find it quite nice to use my thumbs for Tab/Esc/Space, Backspace/Enter/Delete.

The placement of Escape at the top left corner seems to engage the weak pinky finger, but reflecting on how I actually hit Escape (on a run of the mill keyboard layout), my muscle memory moves my left hand far enough to bash Escape with my middle and/or index finger. Trying to press it with my pinky feels super awkward; even ring finger feels better.

That said, I'd love a chance to try out the Kinesis 360 and see if loading the thumbs is the comfort boost I didn't know I needed.

I actually got the non-pro model specifically cause I found the Bluetooth silly. At the same time the lack of a function row on this serves two purposes.

First, if you look at the advantage the function keys were membrane and were not good to use. The style of keyboard makes it hard to have a lot depth on the keyboard so it’s safer to just cut the row off now and use layers.

Second, it literally saves you a whole row of mechanical switches which by itself is a large savings in any board.

I think the more recent advantage IIs have proper switches for the function keys.

It does but the shape was as bad as the mush and best as I can tell they are still smaller. I think I would still take the new layout over it. The 360 does have macro key which you can map to common function keys if you really don’t want to layer the function row.

It's kind of interesting, probably the majority of split-keyboards lack F-keys. Heck, a bunch of them even don't have numeric keys, relying on layering instead: https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards

FWIW one of the reasons that got me into designing a custom keyboard is that split keyboards with a function row are relatively uncommon.

I'd expand on 'relying on layering' as 'trading off hand movement for added complexity'.

I use a smaller layout without a number row. I noticed that when I had to use my laptop's keyboard, pressing the ` key was quite annoying since it required either reaching/moving my hand; whereas on a reduced layout, I found it more convenient to not have to move my hand.

They are designed with a main focus on reaching every key comfortably from the home position. So removing that extra row makes sense, it's too far anyway.

> Same for Bluetooth — I don't get the attraction — when are you taking your giant keyboard away from your desk?

I haven't seen anybody do this yet with the 360, but a lot of split-keyboard users chair-mount them: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/xgqp7b/s...

I could see Bluetooth being handy for that.

> Same for Bluetooth — I don't get the attraction — when are you taking your giant keyboard away from your desk? If you never needed to plug it in, that would be slightly better, but it still needs to be charged. Even if it's only a few ms of extra latency, what's the upside?

For many people the aesthetic advantage of not having cords on your desk is more than enough.

What I'd love is to have one of those 90s mice, that was just the ball part but super-sized, embedded in the middle with two mice buttons

You mean a trackball? I use a Kensington on my desktop. You should be able to order one online.

I could see Bluetooth being useful if the keyboard allows for easily switching between devices: your significant other texts you on the phone, so you quickly switch it to your phone to type out a message, then switch back. (I don't know if this keyboard can do that though.)

I bought a wireless Microsoft ergonomic keyboard a decade ago, with the idea that I could kickback in my chair, with my feet on the desk, and type away with the keyboard in my lap. I've done that maybe five times in the ten years of owning the keyboard. It was not worth the dropped/overly-repeated keypresses over the years (though it was wireless, but not Bluetooth).

I'm looking forward to getting my glove80 in the next month or two, which supports multiple devices via Bluetooth or one device via USB.

In my experience switching between devices with bluetooth is more hassle than it’s worth.

The only thing that does it decently is my speaker, but for keyboard and mouse I have a KVM switch (that tries to do something smart with the keyboard that leads to dropped keys, which is also mega annoying).

No cables also means you constantly have to charge. Even if your keyboard lasts a week that means that once a week in the middle of something it just dies.

If you put it on the charger every night, then what was the point of not having cables :/

And then there is the annoying interference. Sometimes, my AirPods would constantly drop out during a video meeting, until I switched off my Magic Keyboard/Trackpad. Or in some environments, the sculpt would only work reliably if I put the dongle on a USB dock or cable right next to the keyboard.

I hate Bluetooth.

Luckily the base 360 is wired. Though no QMK (and obviously no ZMK), though smartset is pretty ok to. Especially now that they have more than two layers, would love it if they backported that to the Advantage 2.

The F-keys won't be useful for me. Reaching them would require me to move my palms.

After using split keyboards for some time, I came up with a setup that only uses 3 rows, and relies on layer switching (mostly using the thumb clusters) to quickly access any keys.

Maybe on a highly curved keyboard like the Kinesis hitting F-keys would be just a matter of bending your fingers more, and not a matter of moving your palm though.

Agree! main points I don't like about the 360 are the missing F-keys and wireless, i.e. the need to charge it constantly. In this line, a use hub would be nice to connect a mouse like it is possible for the old Advantage..