Best Microsoft Natural keyboard ever. Accept no substitutes.
Show Image
I will see if I can get my hands on one. It is quite old so it's hard to find one for sale. I'm assuming the membrane on the Pro was of much higher quality than the 4000? Two rows of keys on my 4000 stopped working, most likely due to worn out traces on the membrane.
Have you had a chance to try the new Microsoft Sculpt ergo? It seems better than the 4000, though probably not as nice as the older natural boards. Would be curious to get a geekhacker's opinion on it.
That board daerid posted is at my goodwill I think...I'd go pick it up but my fellowes-microban is actually a pretty nice split board. I should write a review on it sometime.
Yes, I have the new Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop. I got it on sale for $50 during Black Friday when I was in California. It's hard to compare because they are so different. The main difference is that Microsoft has caved to the laptop-style scissor key trend with the Sculpt. For scissor keys they are quite good - they remind me of the keys on older MacBook Pros and the first generation MacBook Air - but still nowhere near as good as an IBM-style ThinkPad keyboard. Key travel is obviously lacking compared to the 4000 and older models, but the keys are much snappier and more tactile compared to the mushier 4000. I think I still prefer the Multimedia (again, except for the space bar).
Speaking of the space bar, it is split on the Sculpt, like the rest of Microsoft's newest keyboards, which is good considering that the older Natural keyboards often had mushy and/or stiff space bars due to their length and sub-par stabilization. I think you can remap the left space bar to do other things, like backspace, but I haven't tried.
The "80%" layout and separate number pad are pretty cool, and allows the mouse to be placed closer to your body, but I miss the extra keys above the number pad that the 4000 had. The fact that the arrow keys aren't in a separate section is no big deal and takes very little getting used to.
A huge step backwards is the fact that the top row (Esc, F1-F12, PrtSn, ScrLk, Pause, and Calculator on the main keyboard, and Num Lock, Calculator, and backspace on the number pad) is BUTTONS, not keys. The buttons feel similar to but somewhat better than the Back and Forward navigation buttons on the 4000, which really sucks if you use any of those "keys" a lot. I hate hitting backspace on the number pad because IT'S NOT A KEY!!! Seriously, what were they thinking?
No status indicator lights (Caps/Num/Fn Lock) anywhere. Everything is minimalist which looks very stylish but it's definitely form over function (a la Apple keyboards and mice). You can't look down at your keyboard and tell if Caps Lock is on or not.
The Fn keys are optimized for Windows 8, which makes a couple of them pretty much obsolete now that Windows 10 is out. The rest work as expected. You lose all the extra keys from the previous keyboards, if that matters to you.
The bundled mouse is actually very good. Very round and a bit angled to the right (lefthanders need not apply) but not too big for those with small hands. It also has a power switch to save battery life. The old Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 was more comfortable for larger hands, but had no power switch.
The wireless is very reliable, needs no pairing, and works just like a wired keyboard, unlike the wireless version of the 4000 which was a POS.
Not sure what else I could say about it... if you have any questions feel free to ask. In summary I would say that although the Sculpt is pretty good, I wish Microsoft spent their efforts improving the key feel on their tried and true Natural keyboards instead of developing a stylish modern version with scissor keys from scratch. Because if it's not a ThinkPad keyboard then I would rather use a real keyboard with full-length travel rather than scissor switches. I know they would never make a mechanical Natural keyboard, but there are some truly excellent rubber dome keyboards out there (Thermaltake esports Commander and Cooler Master Storm Devastator are among the best I've tried) and I'm sure Microsoft has the ability to make keyboards that feel just as good as those.
