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Got my Kinesis Advantage 360 Pro, pretty cool

(1/1)

granola bar enthusiast:
hi, i put up a thread about the kinesis advantage360 pro and nobody responded, that could mean one of three things: I have successfully annoyed everyone active on this platform and they refuse to talk to me, nobody has this keyboard and im special:tm:, or everyone else knows that this keyboard is overpriced garbage they shouldnt pay for and i didnt get that message. im going to ignore all of these possibilities and make a review on it. i ordered this on the 11th of november and this arrived today on the 16th at sometime around 4:30. It arrived in a pretty beat up amazon prime box but other then that really good condition. inside i got two usb-a to usb-c connectors that act good for both charging both modules and plugging them in to flash them with qmk but the second port you would see on the usb varient of the keyboard is missing and replaced with a bluetooth toggle on both halves of the keyboard, this means you cant use it wired to your computer to do something that requires lower latency like playing a rhythm game or anything of the sort that needs those milliseconds.   

the firmware flashing process was my first time flashing a keyboards firmware other than my horrendous KBD67 Lite software reset incident that resulted in multiple mental breakdowns and the shutdown of my tinder account but overall it went pretty good. all you need to do is go to kinesis corp's github and fork their repo, enable some actions i forgot about, and go to their visual ui editor and give it all the permissions it needs to sell your info to the cia. once you have set up the main repo you can go to your latest workflow and look in artifacts where you can download the latest firmware release, this is basically the thing that you put in the disc drive you got when plugging the halve of the keyboard to your pc and after a short seziure your keyboard will now be flashed and you can now type in workman. yay.

the keyboard is eastern orthodox christian, ortholinear, split, and is just a plastic dactyl manuform with a pcb. its pretty neat but the keywells are much more distinct and visually noticable than in the renders meaning that each key is as seperated as you will see on your local dactyl manuform but also means it looked kind of silly to me at first. the keys are gateron browns so while i love that the keyboard is made in usa, it hurts that the switches are made by small chinese children, if you thought i was going to be complaining about them being browns not really my first mech was gateron browns adn this are slightly less dusty then that so i'll take it.

keyboard looks to be some sort of integrated top mount with the upper housings visible from a quick glance basically anywhere other than birds eye which is what all the renders are in. doesnt feel cheap but doesnt feel specifically fancy like a 450 usd keyboard should be, keycaps on wireless are some sort of abs keycaps with shinethrough legends that allow for white led to shine whenever you press anything, cant change effects anywhere and they cant change colors like so no gaymer rgb.


my only big dislike about this keyboard is that when i reach for the top row, it kind of slides forward, i should probably tape something heavy to the bottom of it to fix this, also keyswitches are made in china. okay review done solid keyboard for the ergo guy but not for the keyboard or gamer guy

granola bar enthusiast:
second look i spent some time today looking at posts about kinesis keyboards while sipping on my tea trying to understand the japanese users, it looks like kinesis originally or at least only in the posts about it used some fatter dsa like keycaps, the ones shipped out on this keyboard are more like oem.

Findecanor:

--- Quote from: granola bar enthusiast on Wed, 16 November 2022, 21:22:42 ---hi, i put up a thread about the kinesis advantage360 pro and nobody responded, that could mean one of three things: I have successfully annoyed everyone active on this platform and they refuse to talk to me, nobody has this keyboard and im special:tm:, or everyone else knows that this keyboard is overpriced garbage they shouldnt pay for and i didnt get that message.
--- End quote ---
LOL. I think it is the second of these. You kind of addressed the previous thread to other owners of it, and there arean't that many yet. I thought about posting links to the few reviews I've seen, but I didn't think that fit your intention. :-þ


--- Quote from: granola bar enthusiast on Thu, 17 November 2022, 16:56:08 ---it looks like kinesis originally or at least only in the posts about it used some fatter dsa like keycaps, the ones shipped out on this keyboard are more like oem.

--- End quote ---
Are you referring to the non-split ones? The first Kinesis keyboards back in 1992 did use DCS profile in double-shot ABS for most keys, and what I think is actual DSA for the homing keys.
Apparently they got a cheaper supplier for the second generation and forwards.
The design of Kinesis' contoured keyboards were largely inspired by the British Maltron, which does have DSA-like keycaps on all keys (, and where each one sold since 1977 has been hand-wired, hence their high price)

wolfv:

--- Quote from: granola bar enthusiast on Wed, 16 November 2022, 21:22:42 ---... flash them with qmk ...

--- End quote ---
Did you flash with QMK or ZMK?

I am considering buying a Advantage 360 Pro.  I would prefer QMK if it works.

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