For someone who wants to dip his toes (well, fingers) into the water, the matter of keycap profiles is a bit overwhelming. There seems to be strong opinions for and against most variants, and I don't want to buy all of them just to try out which ones I like (though I realise the keyboard hobby is a bit of a slippery slope...). I also don't want to pick one at random and end up with something I don't like.
Let's narrow it down a bit. I've never liked a flat keyboard surface. Even though they've been mostly laptop and chiclet keyboards (not "proper" keycaps), I'm comfortable leaving out uniform/non-sculpted keycaps altogether. If I understand correctly, sculpted cylindrical keycaps, and in particular the "OEM" profile, is what most random rubber dome keyboards use, and probably what I'm used to. I understand that the Cherry and DCS profiles feel different and are favoured by many, but since they have the same basic properties as OEM I won't consider them separately for now.
The safe choice would be either of the sculpted cylindricals, but I'm quite intrigued by spherical keycaps, which brings us to SA. This seems to be the most polarising profile, with both lovers and haters aplenty. One problem often pointed out is that fingers can collide with the back of lower rows ("finger collision"), since there are no height differences ("stairs") unlike most other sculpted profiles. I'm a bit confused though, because non-sculpted keycaps like DSA also lack stairs, yet I haven't seen finger collision mentioned for those. Does anyone who dislikes SA have thoughts on that?
Then there's a raft of new sculpted spherical keycaps more or less inspired by SA. KAT looks like a shorter SA, and I've seen one complaint that it has the same finger collision problem due to lack of stairs. MT3 looks like it lacks stairs for some of the rows as well, but I haven't seen any reports about finger collision. MDA (aka EDRUG Mix) does have slight stairs, and also apparently less deeper dishing, so it sounds like a mix of SA and sculpted cylindricals. I've found no reports on whether it fixes finger collision for those who experiences it with SA though. The upcoming DSS revival also has stairs, but different angles than MDA.
Of course, there's no way to know if finger collision affects me personally without trying something like SA, but I do have a Kinesis Advantage with home row keys that are actually taller than the ones in the row "above" (inverted stairs). Does anyone who experiences finger collision with SA know if it's also a problem for them with Kinesis Advantage?
Would love to hear your thoughts on all this!