Kinesis Advantage360 Professional Split Mechanical Keyboard

Product Information

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. As a result, the first time I set my hands on the highlighted home keys in each keywell, everything felt rather natural.

The thumb cluster is very similar to the Advantage 2 and Ergodox, if you have used either of those two.

Each module features three adjustable positioning options to raise the thumb side of the hand and reduce forearm over-rotation. The regular version of the Advantage360 uses the SmartSet Engine, which I think is the same firmware setup as the Advantage2. The Kinesis Advantage 2 and Kinesis Advantage 360 contoured keyboard sets a new standard for ergonomic keyboards. After all, I bought the Advantage360 mainly because I wanted to adjust the gap between the two halves. Going to curved key wells helped me a lot because it lets me freeze my wrists in a comfortable position and still hit keys far from the home row.

Just like with those boards, I find more than three keys in a thumb cluster too much to make good use of but your mileage may vary. The fully programmable Advantage360 features Kinesis's new-and-improved SmartSet Programming Engine which allows you to customize the keyboard's layout without installing any clunky software or special drivers, or accessing the internet. The build quality remains mostly plastic, and the key switches and caps are serviceable but multitudes of better quality options exist now, and pretty much all the hardware parts are proprietary to Kinesis. After using split keyboards for some time, I came up with a setup that only uses 3 rows, and relies on layer switching (mostly using the thumb clusters) to quickly access any keys. Whereas the keywells are designed to minimize hand movements, the clusters are spaced out far enough that most keys are hard to reach, and the keycap shapes and heights are all over the place.

The bottom line is, if there was a slick, friction free way to define your keymaps, enabling things like auto-shift and tap-dance, without having to delve into code, and a way to fully connect the board to skip the wireless side of things, even with the other shortcomings, this would be the best split ergo board I’ve looked at, and I’d have no trouble universally recommending it. In most cases you will receive an answer within 1-2 hours or the next business day if we receive the question after business hours. Knowing what I do now, I'd personally choose the keyboardio 100 over the kinesis 360, but I'm glad there is another flexible high quality split kb on the market. The pads slip under the palm of my hands a little at times as I move and it irritates me just enough to cast them aside at times.

Pressing all four of these is not very comfortable, but the beautiful thing about a Hyper key is you can create custom global shortcuts to apps. If your pockets aren’t that deep, or you want an easier life, I’d suggest opting for a board from ZSA or Dygma. Wish their was a Colemak-specific keycap set, but coming from the “regular” hardware keyboard world, I know how rare and expensive that is. It's mostly a matter of discipline to not run back to what you're comfortable with to get used to unusual layouts. Tenting puts you in a more neutral, "handshake" posture and reduces the stresses caused by forearm pronation.The moment I put my hands on the Kinesis Advantage2, I knew it was something I would use for years to come. Luckily, a person (Michael Stapelberg) thought like me, and they hacked and modded the Kinesis Advantage2 to support QMK. Please Note: The Advantage360 keyboard uses the open-source ZMK engine and is not designed for novice users. As we all spend way too much time sitting at a desk, in front of screens for our jobs, this can take a toll on the body.