On June 6th I badly injured three fingers of my left hand and was not able to use them for months. As I could not type on my beloved Kinesis Advantage anymore, and naturally looked in the realm of single handed keyboard, of which there are not very many, and Maltron outshines them all. Luckily there was one available on eBay. I immediately ordered one (and then, another) and can now speak from six months of experience.
The idea of keywell (which I was already sold on) is brilliant, it lets you reach 47 keys with your four fingers, plus another 14 in the thumb cluster (even more wonderful concept). I wear XL sized gloves, my fingers were just long enough to reach all the keys; but the upper two rows I have to peek at every now and then, especially if preceded by shift.
Thumb cluster is located lower than Kinesis and at a different angle with keywell, which creates space for a few extra keys. Because of that, thumb is thrust along its axis when tapping rather than swung perpendicular to it, the latter (Kinesis style) looking more ergonomic to me, but I am OK either way.
Shift is sticky, which is reasonable for single handed operation, yet on my Kinesis first thing I did was mapping space (nearest thumb key) to be shift, this way I can comfortably reach most keys while holding down shift. If multi-purpose keys were available, I could use the same key as space, too. But stock Maltron does not allow any mapping, oh woe.
The worst part of Maltron are Alt and Control modifiers, which not only stuck in the odd places, they are triggers: you need to tap them to turn control on, then tap a button to generate modified keystroke, then tap modifier again to turn it off. I just can't use them like that; fortunately, I was able to employ foot Kinesis Advantage pedals to be Alt and Control. There is a third pedal which I made Shift, but I found it's not as convenient to shuffle my feet all the time as having each rest upon its own pedal. Besides, there is a peculiarity with Maltron layout: they decided it's best to place symbols like ; and + (semicolon and plus) on the same key (and firmware emulates it accordingly,) so that keyboard shift and semicolon generates plus, but pedal shift and semicolon produces a colon. And they have eight other keys like that. Oh well.
All five trigger keys and sticky shift are equipped with red status LED next to them. There are also green and yellow LEDs showing the state of (the least ergonomic) little ugly round red button that switches layers, making keywell a numpad.
That was the worst part, from practical prospective, but not the most frustrating; be securely seated to hear this. All the keys except for modifiers lack diodes! They saved several cents a key that way, I am sure. In a $400 keyboard. It's like driving a Ferrari with the cheapest tires. And the MX keys used there have housing for diodes.
Because of this, there is ghosting. More than a few times I noticed Control (which is a trigger, remember) is on though I did not tap it.
There is 35-key flat rectangular cluster of additional keys on the left, including hold-down Control and Alt and trigger Shift, I don't use them, as well as Insert, Delete, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, which I very much could use if they were available in the keywell via some trick. F1-F12, along with never used Pause and ScrollLock, are in the separate row above everything else.
Out of place Winkey modifier is definitely an afterthought.
All the buttons are panel mounted, there are no PCBs involved except for the controller. There is lots of neatly soldered magnetic wire connecting them to PCB. The buttons are easy to pop out, Winkey does it for me all the time on its own. Keys feel not as sturdy as Kinesis but OK.
The keys are not sculpted like Kinesis, they are all the same shape, and that's why I miss them sometimes, I think. Also I like MX browns better than blacks, blues would be even better if I could get them.
To summarize, this keyboard can keep disabled person productive, and it definitely helped me. Had it not suffer from the flaws mentioned above, I would stick with it after recovery for life, even though typing speed suffers a bit: it's worth dedicating my other hand to the pointing device. For a person who can't use hand just for a short time, I think small conventional keyboard will suffice, there is a learning curve, after all. However, I am not switching back to Kinesis Advantage just yet, not until I make it run with QMK. Also Dactyl makes my mouth water, but I am afraid I lack skill and time to build one.
The part I liked back is the layout of the alpha keys, though I would move U and I out of thumb cluster.
Also I chatted with Malton salesperson about a kit they sell, that would come with Teensy for controller, and I would be able to solder my own diodes and pick my own switches.... but somehow he stopped responding after I mentioned the word "Kinesis", I wonder if that was a coincidence.
