KINESIS Gaming Freestyle Edge RGB Split Mechanical Keyboard | Cherry MX Linear Red Switches | RGB | Ergonomic | Detachable Palm Support | Fully Programmable | TKL | Available Tenting

I got tendonitis from work due to typing on a great mechanical keyboard that was unfortunately straight. This two piece set up with tenting has really solved that issue, and I don’t get pain from typing anymore. I will say that the forwards-backwards angle is not quite ideal. I use maximum tenting, and when that happens, the front of the keyboard is a bit too high compared to the back (it’s very flat, and I would prefer it slope down a bit towards the front, since the tenting already lifts it up quite a bit off the table). My solution was to stick little felt furniture pads onto the bottom of the keyboard to create that slight slope.

This is an awesome keyboard, I love it. You can program it for Mac easily with a click of a button once you plug it in! which has Cmd, Opt, and multimedia controls with Fn, configured automatically at once. (though you have to eject and disconnect the keyboard hard drive first before you can use them. more on that below) I wanted the most top left key to be Mission Control, and it took me a bit to figure out how to do it, since this is my first programmable keyboard. The idea is, the keyboard itself has a hard drive on it so it saves your key mapping to it. To use them after saving the profile, youll have to properly eject the hard drive as youd normally do. Then press SmartSet button + F8 to disconnect the hard drive. the app will guide you. - download the SmartSet app first from https://gaming.kinesis-ergo.com/fs-edge-rgb-support/ youll find the manual there too, they really stress you read it :) - click on the button you want to remap, select Macro, click on the Macro text box On the keyboard, press the key(s) you want the new mapping to be. Save the macro, save the profile, then follow app directions to refresh the updated profile, eject keyboard hard drive then disconnect it. And youre done! For me, Mission Control was Ctrl+up arrow, it can be F3 for you. Find out from System Preference -> Misson Control on your Mac, you can change it to whatever you want. I changed it to F3 so I can program the Macro, otherwise every time I was trying to press the combination Ctrl+up arrow it would show the Mission Control and the macro wouldt register.

Im 33 years old and i started to game again about 2 years ago - but when I picked up some of my more favorite games, twitch shooters, i was getting a lot of pain in my wrists. I was using a Corsair K95 and a SteelSeries mouse. Switching to this keyboard and my new mouse alleviated most of the stress and it makes sense because my desk is really non-negotiable in terms of changing. Its a bit pricey but its also good for FPS gaming because you can put aside the other half of the keyboard and you dont have to go purchase a smaller form factor keyboard, i have huge fingers and i dont need a tiny little keyboard. I recommend this to both people looking for relief as well as enthusiasts as it has solid RGB lighting, a sidearea on the left hand of extra keys to program - super cool and handy, easily customizable and programmable macros... onboard software - which is great when you are like me and utilizing a switch between two computers - the preferences are onboard so it works across platforms. As I write this review I realize there are more and more things I like about this keyboard, if you have the extra cash - go for it - you will not regret it. I will retract a few stars because of the premium aspect of the niche product id like a steel body option. It just makes sense especially if you are going to travel with it. I do appreciate the thick woven cable insulation but definitely do not particularly like all the plastic material for the body.

I type faster and make less mistakes with this mechanical keyboard. The split design is comfortable (despite a wrist injury) and the satisfying sound says, “I am getting Lots Of Work Done.” It is great except for one thing: the illuminated keys don’t live up to the advertising. I wanted the illuminated keys because the keyboard is on a drawer under the desk, resulting in much of the keyboard being in shadow, plus I do have to look at the keys when using special characters such as “%” or “{“. The special characters that I need to light are exactly the characters that do not light. The photos that Kinesis uses to sell this keyboard misrepresent how the illumination of the keys actually looks. One of those photos is attached. Also attached are more photos—two showing how the keys look when illumination is on, and the other showing how the LED is positioned under the key cap. After this investigation I’d be surprised if ANY mechanical keys available today can be made to illuminate both characters because parts of the mechanical key (metal and otherwise) are opaque, and the light can’t get around those parts to illuminate the second character. Maybe a design change for future keyboards would be adding a second LED light for the other half of the key. Cool if that circuit were activated by the “shift” key… So the choice seems to be either crisp/accurate/more fun mechanical keys that don’t illuminate completely, or mushy/membrane keys that do illuminate completely. Next Ill try an LED light strip to stick on the underside of the desk above, and turn off the keyboard lights.

I got this and a vertical mouse and together they have alleviated my severe forearm pain. This keyboard allows me to not have my wrists bent out at 45 degree angles all day and night. Now I can have then in front of my shoulders (well, a little inside because theyre also lifted and tilted). As a bonus, the many many macros let me store common work commands that is used and saves a lot of keystrokes.

One of the engineers reviewing the Kinesis keyboard said it worked well for writing, and it had the qualities I was looking for, though I was wondering if something labeled for gaming had some special qualities making it unusable for other purposes. Fortunately, that was not the case. The lighted keyboard and being able to see the letters and numbers in low light and at night when I write was of special appeal. It is still fairly new to me, and I am going with the default changing color scheme, which I like. At some point I plan to try programming individual keys to make it easier to find the right place to put my hand, as too often I get gibberish from faulty hand placement. But that is happening less and less often, as I get a better feel for the keyboard each passing week. After a dozen years of mostly using a laptop keyboard, it took some time getting back to what reminds me a bit of the typewriter keyboard type of key response which I used to love. As some reviewers note, there is a sound, but after a day or two I got used to it, and now mostly like it, as it is the typewriter keyboard sound without the banging of the keys against a platen. One reason I chose this particular keyboard was that the two halves separate, which works for me ergonomically and is a better fit for a cramped desktop space than the horizontal keyboard that came with my new ultra-compact desktop unit. First thing I did was remove the wrist rests so the keyboard could fit in a space with only 8 inches. Indeed, being able to remove the wrist rests was a key selling point, along with the separability of the two keyboard halves and the lighting. Every week I use this keyboard, I like it more and more.

I love this keyboard - I have a Kinesis Advantage keyboard at my office for general work and it has really changed my life as I can type all day without any discomfort. For home use - which includes work as well as some gaming, I needed something more flexible, though. This keyboard is perfect for the job. During the day its comfortable and flexible. I got the brown keyswitches which are tactile and great for typing. When I want to play a game that uses the mouse I can move the right half of the keyboard out of the way and I have much more real estate (and better ergonomics) than with a single, full-sized keyboard. I am using the tenting adapter (what they call the lift kit) on its lowest setting and I really like it. Im only giving four stars because the lift kit should really be included. I think its basically required to use the keyboard properly.

I bought this keyboard not for gaming but for its ergonomics, as someone whose wrists had become sore from typing a lot every day. I should say right away that a big plus of this keyboard is that the soreness in both wrists and some fingers disappeared almost immediately upon my using this keyboard, so its ergonomic design definitely helped me. I use the keyboard with its optional lift kit set to a 10 degree angle. (I think anyone using this keyboard for ergonomics needs to buy the lift/tilt kit.) I also place the two keyboard halves about a shoulder-width apart so my arms and wrists are about perpendicular to the edge of the table. I find the large palm rests sturdy and quite comfortable and I have no trouble typing for many hours without strain or pain. So a great job to the engineers for making a well designed, comfortable to use, reliable keyboard. But the big plus is balanced by a big negative which is that, even after two months of steady use and despite a lot of tinkering with the Kinesis software that lets one remap keys and adjust responses of keys (see below), my typing speed is still way below (about half) of my typing speed on my previous keyboard, and I continue to make many typing errors that are mainly related to having mapped the Ctrl modifier key to a long-press of the thumb keys. I should point out that, before using this Kinesis keyboard, I have used Thinkpad keyboards for many years as my favorite keyboard. I am also an experienced and fast touch typist on standard keyboards. I feel that four changes, in decreasing order of priority, would change this good keyboard into a great ergonomic keyboard: 1. Split the large space key of each keyboard half into two separate keys, giving four keys altogether that the thumbs could type. It would also be better to place the split thumb keys along a short arc of the thumb so one thumb key is a little bit to the right and closer to the wrist pad on the left keyboard half, and similarly for the right keyboard half. (Just splitting the thumb key in half as it currently exists would not be as ergonomic.) Two of these four thumb keys could then be mapped to modifier keys like control or shift, and perhaps the delete key could also be mapped to one, leaving a remaining thumb key for space. Having just one key under each thumb is a greatly missed opportunity to make the keyboard more ergonomic since the ctrl, Shift, Del keys are badly placed on most keyboards (activated by the weak pinky finger). I use emacs heavily for writing and coding and so having quick easy ergonomic ways to touch ctrl and to hit the Esc key are especially important for me. 2. Use half-height short-travel non-mechanical keys or even a mouse-click switch under the four thumb keys so that the thumb keys can be activated as rapidly as possible, with the least amount of travel. (Thumbs are strong but slow.) This is crucial for fast accurate typing if modifier keys like ctrl and Shift are to be activated by the thumbs. My most common error on the Kinesis keyboard is not pressing the thumb fast enough to ctrl or Shift another key. 3. Offer a version of this keyboard that uses half-height non-mechanical shorter-travel silent dome-based switches (similar to what Lenovo uses in its Thinkpad keyboards) for ALL of the keys. After trying several different mechanical keyboards like the Kinesis, I found that I simply type faster and more enjoyably with high-quality non-mechanical low-height quiet keys. (And it doesnt hurt that dome-based keys are nearly completely quiet, no clacking of the mechanical keys that can bother other people or that are heard while talking on the phone.) I think the ergonomic keyboard market is big enough to justify this choice economically, although I would guess many gamers would prefer mechanical keys. 4. Modify the Kinesis software to allow long-press overloading of keys for all keys (see below for more details) and to allow simple chords (say press 2 keys simultaneously to create a letter or to emulate Shift, Alt, Ctrl). Right now, the software allows a secondary long-press only on non-alphabetical keys like the space bars, Shift, CAPS, etc. But it would be extremely useful to allow long-presses on letters under the stronger faster fingers (letters d and f on the left, j and k on the right) so that, say, long-pressing an f on the left would be a ctrl modifier for the right keyboard letters, long-pressing a j on the right would be a ctrl modifier for left keyboard letters, and similarly long-pressing d or k would Shift the letters on the opposite keyboard half. If well implemented, this software fix would also get rid of the need to have multiple thumb keys. Since I believe the keyboard can be completely remapped configured in software, I just dont understand why Kinesis wont provide more flexibility for remapping, including providing some simple chords. The user can simply decide whether or not to take advantage of this more greater remapping capability. Here are some other miscellaneous comments: - To avoid making it too hard to switch back and forth between the Kinesis keyboard and my laptop keyboard (or using another desk keyboard when traveling), this is how I remapped just a few keys of my Kinesis keyboard (using the SmartSet app that works on MacOS or Windows but not Linux), especially to make it fast and easy to use when in the emacs editor: I used the Tap-and-Hold feature to add a secondary feature (long-press) to left space bar: short tap is space, long-press is ctrl right space bar: short tap is space, long-press is ctrl CAPS: short tap is Esc, long-press is ctrl (because I remap CAPS to ctrl on my regular keyboards) ;: key: short tap is Esc, long-press is Shift (so I dont have to move my right pinky for Shift) right Shift: is now the ;: key (a lower frequency key) But, again, using a long-press under the thumb keys for ctrl makes the timing difficult for activating the ctrl key quickly so is a major source of typing errors. This would be avoided by splitting each current thumb key into two separate keys (four thumb keys in all) since ctrl could be directly mapped to two of these thumb keys, also use a much shorter stroke to activate the thumb key. Or use simple chords for Shift, Alt, Ctrl like the original Fingerworks keyboard. Note: the SmartApp and the programming language allows one to adjust the number of milliseconds that have to pass for a long-press to be detected instead of a tap but I could not find a timing that removed my typing errors. I am using 250 ms for a long-tap detection. The extra thumb keys would also allow DEL to be mapped to a thumb, or simple chord like f and j pressed simultaneously could be mapped to DEL if the software were slightly modified. The DEL key on the Kinesis keyboard is really badly placed, far from the main row. - The IOS version of the SmartSet app works only on a large screen Mac, not on a Mac laptop, which is quite frustrating and should be fixed. - change firmware so lighting doesnt turn on and stay on when FN key is used, rather annoying. - redesign the plastic key caps so that the secondary characters are more clearly visible and readable when keyboard lit. Currently, secondary characters are dark when keyboard is lit. - add a 2nd B key to right side of keyboard so B can be typed with either hand. There is room for an extra B key on the right keyboard half. - a warning to future users: the Kinesis keyboard takes up a lot of desk space when the two halves are spread apart at shoulder width, there is little room to refer to documents on the table. Also tricky is where to place a mouse. Between the keyboard halves works but it is awkward to reach in between the keyboard halves over and over again. Maybe implement a Thinkpad-like finger mouse, so one can do some mousing without moving hands off the keyboard? - The tilt kit is overpriced as two simple pieces of plastic, although it is well designed. If Kinesis is finding that most people are buying the tilt kit at the same time as keyboard, include the tilt kit and reduce the total price.

Overall like the keyboard. You can, in theory, move keys around. The reprogramming software works fine. But the keys themselves are different heights per row. So if you move a key from one row to another then both keys you swapped are the wrong height for their new position.

This was one of the highest rated keyboards for ergonomics from Wirecutter and some other sites. I appreciate the split style and key action, but the number pad is in an unusual configuration on the left hand side of the keyboard, which makes my default left hand position feel unnatural. Also tenting is extra, I didnt think I needed this add-on, but the keyboard itself almost seems to slope inward uncomfortably. Perhaps it is because I formerly had a one piece ergonomic that was slightly raised in the center. Ive currently just stuck a notebook under the middle bit of the keyboard. long-term, I might return this keyboard, but will utilize for some time before deciding.