Kinesis Advantage360 Professional Split Mechanical Keyboard

Product Information

I received this board on the 31st October, and my initial thoughts were that it was frighteningly good . At this point I’ve been using it everyday for about a month and while I still think this is one of, if not the best split ergo board you can buy, I do have some reservations. The Advantage2 was the best keyboard I have had so far. With QMK, it was powerful and highly customizable as well. However, I was still missing a couple of things from the Moonlander MK1 that I wish the Advantage2 had:

Unlike traditional staggered keyboards, the orthogonal layout mirrors the natural motion of your fingers The Advantage360 features low-force tactile “brown” mechanical key switches and premium PBT plastic keycaps with dye-sublimated legends. The two keywells are “tented” to moderately raising the thumb side of the hand. Tenting positions in a neutral, posture and reduces the stresses caused by forearm pronation. Three heights are available to suit a range of users. So the only real downside is probably it’s very high price point and that it doesn’t come along with any bundled extras for that high price, like wrist pads, a carry bag, … etc.I could imagine that some people never use the function keys. Or never use the numpad keys. To some people they might be completely useless... Which would make a smaller keyboard understandable. A MRI scan can also reveal TOS problems, but the medical technicians must be familiar with it the tests and and execute them correctly. In my case the MRI scan was negative, probably because the test was only partially done (in hindsight). Press Mod+macro1 to put the left side into bootloader mode; it should attach to your computer as a USB drive. The sound signature is very nice out of the box, with only a little switch ping on the odd key. I haven’t opened the case up but I’m led to believe there is no glue used anywhere so it you did want to dive in, maybe invalidate your warranty, and add extra sound proofing, or de-solder the browns and put different key switches in, you should be able to fairly easily. I had it in my head that swapping the switches out was one of the first things I would do but I honestly like the way it sounds and feels just fine. Worth noting for those of you coming from an Advantage 2; they do include what they call the ‘bridge’ connector, which spaces the halves out so your hands end up the same distance apart as they were on the Advantage 2.

Wow! Another TOS survivor. Despite all the RSI talk in the programming community, I still find it very rare that someone is actually diagnosed, let alone, goes through TOS. However, I do suspect that its prevalence is higher than estimated in this target community. Please Note: The Advantage360 keyboard uses the open-source ZMK engine and is not designed for novice users. ZMK does not support onboard programming so users who rely on that feature may not be satisfied with the Pro. Kinesis Technical Support can help point you in the right direction and provide written documentation, but we cannot provide individualized ZMK training and custom programming help. The Advantage360 Pro features an ortholinear key configuration (as opposed to staggered), meaning that all the keys arranged into vertical columns. This arrangement may feel unfamiliar at first, but it mirrors your natural finger motion for maximum ergonomics. Three Default Layers Separating the keywells positions the arms at shoulder-width to keep wrists straight and perpendicular to the home row to reduce abduction and ulnar deviation. Learn More If you encounter a git conflict when updating your repository to V3.0 please follow the instructions on how to resolve it here.

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Aside from the thumb clusters, key layout is near identical to a Moonlander whereas the thumb clusters on the 360 are more like the Advantage2 or Ergodox. 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.

Do not overtax yourself early on, and if necessary try using an online typing tutorial program for some low-pressure practice. In my case, the first clue came by accident. The MD asked my to hold my arms up and after a short time it became really painful and intolerable. Another one rest is taking your pulse by hand while holding up your the arm. If the pulse is pretty weak, hard to feel or completely disappears, that’s a strong indication for TOS. Familiarize yourself with the basic layout of the Advantage360 Pro. You’ll notice that the editing keys have been move to the left and right thumb clusters. This redistributes workload mover evenly among all your fingers and eliminates extending to these standard key locations. The alphanumeric keys are exactly where you would expect to find them. I must be the only person on HN that dislikes my Kinesis Advantage 2. I bought one in 2021 after the ZSA Moonlander didnt quite meet my expectations. While the keywell idea is amazing, i found that the two halves of the keyboard weren't angled towards each other enough and I still had very painful ulnar deviation.

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Custom Keycaps, the Advantage2, came with shiny ABS keycaps. The Moonlander had better keycaps (PBT). The Advantage360 may look very different than other keyboards, but you’ll find that making the transition is quite easy. Thanks to its adjustable separation, contoured keywells, unique thumb clusters, and 3-way integrated tenting, the Advantage360 keeps your hands in the optimal typing position. Tenting is easy, adjustable, and feels good to use. I liked the thumb cluster tenting (over the ergodox) because it felt more natural. The non-uniform keys may seem an odd choice and aesthetically a bit ‘minging’ but having lived with it for a little I think it is genuinely useful to discern one key from another, particularly in the thumb clusters. I don’t notice the difference any more but I do appreciate it from a tactility point of view. Second, the thumb keys on the Advantage2 had unique, taller keycaps for the Ctrl, Alt, Cmd/Win keys. They were much easier to reach. They replaced them with a shorter keycap or, let's say, normalized it with all the other keycaps. Because my Raycast/Alfred (finder applications) and the ESC key are on those keys, I immediately found it cumbersome. Six new hotkeys