Good keyboards for short-fingered folks

November 3, 2022 1:57 PM

Before I give up on pain-free typing forever, I'd like to try a smaller keyboard. What are the brands I need to look at?

I have exceedingly unfortunate Trump-sized fingers. I spend a lot of time at a computer. I'm not young anymore and the strain is absolutely killing my hands and forearms.

Please no mechanical keyboards, controllers, or gaming mouses. I would like to keep on with gaming, but I mainly just want to make sure I can keep typing.

posted by the liquid oxygen to Computers & Internet (19 answers total)

What kind of strain do you mean?

A layout with less finger travel (such as Dvorak) can help with finger strain.

An ergonomic "split" keyboard can help with wrist strain.

A moving wrist rest can help with forearm strain.

If you are specifically looking for keys closer together, searching for "bluetooth keyboards" can help, as there are many compact portable ones.
posted by Phssthpok at 2:08 PM on November 3, 2022

Sorry, yes, I mean the strain from finger travel; for instance, trying to hold the shift or control key and letter at the same time.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 2:21 PM on November 3, 2022

Would sticky keys help, at least temporarily?

Are you happier with a laptop-sized keyboard? That's about the size a lot of Bluetooth keyboards are going to be; a lot of smaller ones might have trade-offs like capacitive buttons or being roll-up or folding.
posted by sagc at 2:27 PM on November 3, 2022

I find this tiny one is actually very type able
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3601

Not with thumbs as shown, but with regular home position.
posted by at at 3:04 PM on November 3, 2022

A very hypothetical solution is map the shift, ctrl, and alt keys to a foot pedal.
posted by kschang at 3:08 PM on November 3, 2022

I know of three worlds of small keyboards that might fit small hands. I don't have small hands personally so I can't say that any will help, but here are examples that may help you on your search.

Industrial:
https://www.amazon.com/Keyboard-Portable-Professional-Industrial-Computer/

iPad/tablet:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WDJNBT1/

Media Player Keyboards:
https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Keyboard-Touchpad-PC-connected/
posted by fake at 4:07 PM on November 3, 2022

Strongly seconding sticky keys. Even on a smaller keyboard, it saves your weakest fingers from having to hold down a key for as long and makes it easier to use different fingers for those keys.

Keyboards like the kinesis advantage also let you use your thumb for most of the modifier keys, and there's not much need for travel. On the other hand, they can be really expensive to try out.
posted by trig at 4:27 PM on November 3, 2022

Do your damnedest to get your hands (fingers) on a WayTools TextBlade. They're amazing but unavailable. It's a truly wonderful thing if you can find a Beta Tester model (known as a Treg).
posted by dobbs at 5:44 PM on November 3, 2022

All of the above are excellent suggestions (losing my mind over the TextBlade right now) but I will add this: If it's the "chording" of holding Shift and reeeeaching all the way to the "T" key (say), I think the standard typing best practice is to hold Shift with your right pinky while typing "T" with your left index finger... so no chording, really. I know that my typing is a hodge-podge of bad habits that I've developed over the last {mumble} years, but I also know that people can change their habits.

I learned to type Dvorak on a Kinesis Freestyle when I broke a pinky and knew I was going to be slooooow for a couple weeks anyway. There are also many sizes of keyboards; could you see if a Best Buy or a Staples or similar near you might have some display models to try out? Or at least compare your Lilliputian mitts to?
posted by adekllny at 6:13 PM on November 3, 2022

A compact ergonomic keyboard I’m interested in (but have no actual need for) is the Keyboardio Atreus. It might be too different from what you want since it’s mechanical AND split AND columnar AND has no numeric keypad AND moves the modifiers to thumb keys, but it’s programmable and you can configure it with your choice of switches. I’ve been really happy with my Model 01 from the same folks. It’s not as hard to get used to layers as you might think.

And unlike the TextBlade it’s a thing you can actually buy.
posted by fedward at 6:52 PM on November 3, 2022

I like the Apple Magic keyboards, which are about 70% of a full size keyboard, and work great with all computers.
posted by nickggully at 7:39 PM on November 3, 2022

Textblade is, if not a scam, vaporware enough to be an extremely bad recommendation.
posted by sagc at 9:01 PM on November 3, 2022

Logitech K380
posted by armoir from antproof case at 10:05 PM on November 3, 2022

^ can confirm, Logitech 380
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:28 PM on November 3, 2022

If you want chording with something that's available, there's Tap Strap 2. You may be able to find it cheaper via some other vendor. They just came up with TapXR which is mounted to the wrist and can figure out which finger you tapped without the individual finger sensors, but it's more expensive. Obviously it's not a "keyboard" per se, but it is available.
posted by kschang at 11:25 PM on November 3, 2022

Another small hand haver chiming in for the Logitech K380. Bought one for business travel and it rapidly became my full time keyboard.
posted by superna at 5:08 AM on November 4, 2022

Thanks, everyone! I didn't realize there were so many options (the foot pedal is something I absolutely never would have considered). I marked as best the responses that were actual keyboards that I can currently buy, but am still open to further suggestions!

I don't type "correctly" to begin with and have not had success training myself out of it even with purpose-built professional software, so I'm not optimistic about learning Dvorak.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 4:10 PM on November 5, 2022

The foot pedal thing is often used by transcriptionists to flip pages, or for musicians to flip pages while their hands are busy. But they are essentially 3 button keyboards with humongous buttons that you can map to different functions.

And expensive ($200 USD) but interesting chording keyboard in a traditional QWERTY layout is the CharaChorder Lite, claims to use 500% less strokes to input the same text through chording.
posted by kschang at 6:41 PM on November 6, 2022

To provide an update, I've gone with the K380 first. At first I was disappointed with its similarity in size to my traditional keyboard, but then I actually used it. The difference is big enough that I'm still mis-typing a lot. The strain seems greatly reduced! Rather than distance alone, I think the much smaller height of the keys also makes a big difference.

I thought it wouldn't make gaming any easier since I map to my numpad for a lot of stuff and this doesn't have one, but I was able to remap to other keys the K380 does have, and gaming is a lot less exhausting, now, too--not that I have much time for it these days. Thanks again for your help, everyone!
posted by the liquid oxygen at 12:40 PM on December 4, 2022