So I’ve been into mechanical keyboards for about two and a half years now. Here’s how I would roughly rank layout changes I’ve tried
1. Split or unibody split
2. Moving to a smaller form factor (40% keyboard) so that my fingers don’t move nearly as far from the home row)
3. Ortholinear on a non-split board
I’ve tried ortholinear alone, ortho on split, and row staggered on split. I feel like split is the most improvement in comfort for me in general. But, on a split board I do prefer ortho, if that helps. On a non-split board, I’m not sure ortho has a huge effect for me, I use both regularly and don’t notice a big difference.
I honestly may even rank 40% boards as number one, because of how useful having numbers and symbols so close to or on the homerow is for comfort.
So anyway, those are my two cents from my experience
1. Split or unibody split 2. Moving to a smaller form factor (40% keyboard) so that my fingers don’t move nearly as far from the home row) 3. Ortholinear on a non-split board
I’ve tried ortholinear alone, ortho on split, and row staggered on split. I feel like split is the most improvement in comfort for me in general. But, on a split board I do prefer ortho, if that helps. On a non-split board, I’m not sure ortho has a huge effect for me, I use both regularly and don’t notice a big difference.
I honestly may even rank 40% boards as number one, because of how useful having numbers and symbols so close to or on the homerow is for comfort.
So anyway, those are my two cents from my experience