I hope this blog post finds you well

The company I bought a tiny keyboard from asked me for a review of it for their website. I don’t know if they’ll actually post it, so I’m posting it here as well.

I have a keyboard problem. The Park sometimes makes it a struggle to type on my laptop keyboard. The keys are too light and too close together, and when my hands shake, I accidentally type double keys all the time. But I didn't have the same problem with my old Das Keyboard mechanical keyboard at home. I realized I needed to get a mechanical keyboard for work, too. But it had to be portable. It had to be something I could toss my bag and carry with me.

First I bought a Keychron K7 low-profile wireless keyboard. It was okay. But I didn't like the low-profile keycaps, and I didn't like the setup of the function keys. I couldn't customize it to work the way I wanted it to. So I began looking into keyboards with customizable layouts. And eventually that led me to the Atreus.

I liked how it was small, portable, hot swappable, and completely customizable—everything I was looking for in a keyboard. And it was fairly cheap compared to some other customizable keyboards that could run $200 to $350. So, I bought one. Bare bones. No switches, no keys. Just a tiny keyboard base. And ever since then, I've had a tiny keyboard problem.

First, it was the switches. Do I want brown switches, red switches, box brown switches, clicky switches, tactile switches, linear switches? Do I want a mix of switches on function keys versus letter keys? I’ve currently settled on Akko penguins for the letter keys and Gateron Aliaz for the thumb/function/layer keys. Silent, and I don’t accidentally hit space too many times in a row.

And then there are the keys. XDA, DSA, OEM, Cherry. I don't know what the differences between them are, but I've tried them all. Or most of them, anyway. Thankfully, a certain online retail behemoth has a friendly return policy or else I’d be swimming in unused keycaps. I’m currently using a dirt cheap set of Cherry profile keycaps.

But the caps and switches are just the tip of the iceberg. I can’t stop reconfiguring this tiny keyboard. There are only 44 keys, so you have to have layers, but how do you want those layers? Do you want the layers the way the Atreus comes with as default? That’s too easy. You need your own layer setup. So you customize it. You tweak it. You break it. You fix it. You customize it again. You think you’re happy with it. You think you’re done. But you’re not.

Soon you're constantly tweaking and tinkering. You think you have it all figured out and perfected, but then you read about miryoko layout or home row modifiers or Colemak-DH or all sorts of other ways you can configure the keyboard. And the tinkering cycle begins anew.

And don’t even get me started on whether you should keep the kaleidoscope firmware or flash it with QMK. I don’t even know what any of that means, but I always come back to kaleidoscope and chrysalis

So what do you get from all this tinkering? You get a tiny keyboard that is entirely yours. A tiny keyboard that takes up no space in your bag, but that lets you type without hunching over your flimsy work laptop keyboard. Combine it with a portable laptop riser and it will change your mobile work life.

There will be some growing pains when you adopt the tiny keyboard lifestyle. I’m still getting the hang of the tiny keyboard, so my typing speed isn’t what it could be yet, but my hands don’t get as tired from typing. Even with my slower typing speed, it’s a more comfortable typing experience, which is invaluable considering how much time I spend on a computer at work. But most importantly, my tiny keyboard is a trustworthy friend. My lil buddy. My boon companion. The tiny keyboard will always be there for me, because it can, with a little tweaking, become whatever I need it to be. Possibly the best $109 I’ve ever spent.