I picked up a Hexgears A1 Low Profile because the keys were hot swappable and the previous keyboard I got to be a typewriter keyboard got repurposed. I took this one on a mandated trip1 and typed on it a little with the stock 50g keys. Its a bit clacky and I don’t like how hard the key were to use. Despite being 50g, they feel a lot stiffer than the supposedly 45g Gaterons in the Keychron.

After sourcing 35g Choc V22 switches and doing the key replacement I gave it another try at home for a couple of days. Quite pleasant to type on new but with some goofy issues.

Basically the tilde key and the question mark keys are in very stupid locations. As an oft-Linux user the tilde key is needed for getting to the home directory at times. It’s also used a lot in Lua3. This one requires a very specific chording of Function, Shift, and Escape, because the Shift key is also “Page Up” if you chord in the wrong order. I really don’t care for chording outside of stenography4. But tilde isn’t super common and I could find a way to live with it or work around it.

The bigger issue is question marks and slash are on the other side of the arrow key cluster. My muscle memory keeps slamming the shift key instead because that’s where the key is. This takes a bit more active management to deal with and I don’t tend to like that for a single keyboard.

There is also no right-hand control key. This is common for a lot of 60%’s but I do happen to use that one often. For the purposes of casual phone typing or drafting it’s not so bad–drafts don’t need to have proper punctuation anyhow. Though the added mass5 and fixed size makes it a difficult competition against something foldable. It’s basically winning solely on those 35g mechanical keys being pleasant to type on. And it’s losing a lot back due to the wonky key layout.

It cost about the same as a Logitech Pop, though, and it’s wireless. The battery isn’t a standard replacable cell like the Logitech but being mechanical makes it comfier.

I oscillate between the idea of selling it off or just keeping it in a bag. I don’t like to travel with the Sofle6

Pros#

  • Hot-swappable switches so you can replace them
  • 3 bluetooth channels
  • Smaller than a Logitech Pop keyboard
  • Costs about the same as a Logitech Pop (excluding replacement switches)
  • Riser is held on with a magnet, which is a neat idea

Cons#

  • Heavier than a Logitech Pop keyboard
  • Choc V2, so specialty switches are limited compared to V1
  • Tilde is hidden behind “Shift+Fn+Esc” in that specific order. “Fn+Shift” becomes “Page Up.” I reserve my keyboard chording for the stenography boards.
  • Slash and question button is exiled to the other side of the arrow cluster
  • No right control key
  • Riser is held on with a magnet, which means you can lose it

  1. Family decided I needed to sit in a room and watch an ISP install cables wrong in a house they bought. ↩︎

  2. I prefer 20g Choc V1s, but you basically have to special order keyboards to get V1s. ↩︎

  3. Lua uses tilde for the “not equal to” operator. As in fucks ~= nil. ↩︎

  4. A method of typing where you spend two years learning how to type 200 words per minute in an archaic language. Plover brought it over from court reporting to general desktop use. It’s also needed to make “1$/finished minute” transcription jobs commercially viable outside of AI use. ↩︎

  5. The keyboard has an aluminum case. ↩︎

  6. My Sofle has 20g keys and is fantastically comfortable to use. However the Pro Micros are just standing on naked pins for some unknowable reason. They bend if jostled in a bag. It has not broken yet but they really should have been comfortably seated in stands instead of soldered naked. ↩︎