Keyboard suggestions with reduced depth for small hands

[catieblink]

I'm trying to find a keyboard with reduced depth from the bottom to top row. I have very small hands and I get a lot of RSI problems in my left little finger as its very bent when pressing Ctrl and other keys.

Most keyboards seem to be 9 - 9.5 cm from space bar to number row. All the compact keyboard I have seen still have approximatly this depth. I'm looking for one that's ideally 7.2 - 7.8cm.

I currently use a logitech k310 as this has a good key height for me (plus it's waterproof). I'm not a fan of very flat keyboards. My ideal keyboard would be this, but with the keys spaced closer.

Many thanks for your time and any suggestions

[MajorZoT]

I think you might be needing a candybar type of keyboard. Which means that typically the number row is missing and a number pad is on either the left or the right side so the keyboard itself has only 4 rows.

This one is the CandyBar Premium which has already run as a GB in 2019 and 2020:

https://thekey.company/products/candybar-premium

[catieblink]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not sure that would work. Its the stretch between the keys that needs to be smaller.

For example, Ctrl (with pinky) and W (with index finger) is a real stretch. My pinky has to be very curled back to make this movement, which can become painful if repetitive.

I'm ideally looking for a keyboard with a small row height to reduce this kind of stretch.

Or if there was a keyboard with no caps lock key, and ctrl + shift moved up a row that could possibly also help a bit.

[MajorZoT]

OK so what if you switched caps lock with ctrl? Most people never use caps lock in the first place and that way ctrl would be very reachable.

The other problem is that you wont find a custom keyboard where the space between the keycaps is smaller than about 1mm. And that shouldn't be the goal for anyone because you would constantly be hitting the keys next to the one you want to hit and more so the keys itself need a little bit of room to be pressed down and then come back up again. So you might need a keyboard where the keycaps itself are smaller than regular keycaps (about 18 mm in width and height) because that way the keys would be closer to each other and you wouldn't need to stretch your fingers. But those keyboards would most definetly be flat keyboards.

[catieblink]

In my ideal world I'd find a keyboard with full layout, but where the whole thing was scaled ~20% smaller.. keys and all, as it's not just ctrl key that the problem, though that's by far the worst. I'm sort of surprised that this isn't a thing. People with really big hands/fingers must get the opposite problem.

The Logitech k310 doesn't have regular sloped size keys, they are separate vertical sided buttons. These types of keys could easily move closer 1-1.5mm

I would consider a flat keyboard if I could get the row depth correct. Though the ones I've found still seem to be the same size depth. Also they tend to come with reduced keys. I don't really need the number pad, though I do use the full cursor key panel.

Otherwise..

Do you know of a good way to rebind keys? The logitech setpoint setting program doesn't have this? (sorry if that's a very noob question)
I could try moving **** to caps, then ctl to shift. I think having shift and ctrl upside down would do my muscle memory in

Thanks for time and advice

[MajorZoT]

Apparently there are teeny-weeny keyboards that look like this:


https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Universal-Compatible/dp/B08GFJ7ZGK/


https://www.amazon.de/dp/B08BHQ3SHN/?language=en_GB

But they all kinda have a very strange bottom row 

[catieblink]

Yeah, these are kind of my problem. I have bought a bunch of similar cheap keyboard in the past and these tend to be wireless and poor quality.

The row depth looks pretty good on the first link, (about 4.5cm for 3 rows QAZ, rather than 5.3 in my current logitech), but the layout is just weird!  and no PgUp and PgDn key block.

No one I can see does a regular but smaller keyboard.  :sigh:

[tp4tissue]

What you want is a Split keyboard. you can use one of the inner last row keys as space bar. like on the japanese keyboards

[gh_pp]

Instead of 80% scaled down layout, I solved the pinky finger problem by using a 3 way split spacebar so I have 3 modifiers and space under my thumb

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=109459.0

The epomaker sk61x/68/7x/8x series are the most accessible off the shelf keyboard you can buy if you don’t use QMK

I myself got a assembled kbdfans75v2 split spacebar, shift, backspace (moved bs to the closer location at \|)  ($172 + $18 Gatreon switches ,labor included)

No affiliation except a happy customer. Their solder 60% and 65% also support split spacebar if you don’t need function keys

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