Build mine this weekend. Building it was soooooo much fun
Still refining my layout. Mine has Clears which still need to be stickered and lubed (didn't have the patience for that his weekend, really wanted to get it up and running and start typing). I am using cherry DS but unfortunately that means tons of keys in the wrong size and profile (waiting for the DSA Retro GB).
Advantages:
+ LOOOOOVING it for gaming. Especially with games like League of Legends, the stagger annoyed the hell out of me for summoner spells. Left hand side + mouse is just perfect.
+ The programmable controller is just awesome. So many possibilities!
+ I like the split. Positioning each hand separately is often nice.
+ Exposes bad habits from staggered keyboards. On my left hand I seem to shift to the left (with my left hand) on the second row of alphas (from r to d for example) opposed to the direction of the stagger. Never noticed it until I started typing on the ErgoDox.
+ Fun to build
+ Unique
+ Very little hand movement (but then this is also true for my pokers)
+ Thumb buttons are a great improvement. No longer is my thumb confined to working the spacebar! FREEEEEEEDOOOOOM
Neutral:
. Kinda wish I had gone for the case with wrist rest (but I might figure out some way to add one)
. Still waiting for a fitting set of keycaps
. WPM still terrible (but partially because I am more hesitant than I really need to be)
. Doesn't come with feet but I already solved that.
Bad:
- Top 3 thumb buttons are hard to reach, for me to the point of being useless. Maybe this is due to the way I currently position my hand. Maybe I will get used to them. For now they get less frequently used functions like the windows key and it's fine.
- Moving both sides independently also irritates me sometimes. I am someone who moves his keyboards around a lot and with my pokers I move it with one hand and the second hand automatically orients itself after the move. With the ErgoDox I adjust each hand individually and my right hand seems to lose orientation more because of it. Hopefully this is just a matter
- For me the clear layerstack or L0 key doesn't seem to work. Not sure why, posted on massdrop and hopefully this will be resolved for me soon.
In short: lots to love, few cons which hopefully will lessen with time