Mechanical Keyboards 101

Keyboard 5: ZSA Moonlander

Keyboard 5: ZSA Moonlander

Quick summary of the keyboard:

This board is called the Moonlander by ZSA. It has little legs to adjust the typing angle that best suits your hands. The keys are in an Ortholinear layout – meaning not staggered like a traditional keyboard. This may help with the strain on your hand as you reach more for keys. I’m a big fan of learning new things and the process of re-learning how to type on this was fun. Your mileage may vary.

Keyboard: ZSA Moonlander
Keycaps: Default White with legends (legends just means they aren’t blank)
Switches: Lubed and filmed DROP holy pandas
Cable: Glorious Coil Cable – White – the TRRS cable that connects the two sides is by kriscables
Deskmat: NovelKeys Bento – Salmon

Terms:

• Keyboard – This is not the entire thing, it’s pretty much just the case.
• Keycaps – Those things you push to type are keycaps.
  • There are several types of keycap profiles – meaning there are different heights, shapes, and materials they are made from.
• Switches – These are the mechanical mechanism under the keycap that initiates the keypress. There are three main types of mechanical keyboard switches I’ve listed below. There are more but these are the ones I’ll focus on today.
  • Linear – Same constant feel throughout the press till bottom out.
  • Tactile – Gives some feedback by having a bit of resistance at first before giving it away to a linear press the rest of the way down.
  • Clicky – Clicky switches are tactile in that they give some resistance and feedback at the top but instead once you pass that threshold they make a clicky sound. This is fun but a great way to annoy everyone in your office. I found out the hard way!
  • Lubed – This isn’t a type of keycap, it’s a modification that you or a factory-made to the switch. Lubing a switch, you add a bit of lubricant to the switch to increase the smoothness. Also it is common to add lube to stabilizer housing to improve the sound.
  • Film(ed) – This is a small material placed between two parts of a switch to make it more stable and give the switch a deeper sound when typing.
• 60% – This is a keyboard layout without function keys (f1, f2, etc.), no number pad, no direction arrows, or those keys above the arrows.
• 65% – Like the above but includes arrow keys, and typically a few of those buttons above them.
• 75% – This is like the 65% but with function keys.
• TKL – TKL means tenkeyless. It’s a full keyboard with the number pad chopped off.
• 99% – This is almost a full keyboard, but the layout is condensed. Typically missing only a few keys from a full keyboard.
• Alice – Alice is a type of split keyboard. It can be very similar to an Ergo keyboard. The main difference is an Alice layout tends to be one board, not separated like the ergodox style boards. See the Moonlander below for an example.
• Ergo – A sometimes strange layout based around ergonomics for the user. Sometimes to help with RSI.
• Ortholinear – In a normal keyboard the keys are in staggered rows. Q is just offset from A which is under it. In an Ortholinear layout, Q would be directly above A, directly above Z.
• Full – if you can guess from above, that’s the big boy with a number pad and all.
• GMK – Is a keycap manufacturer. Think of GMK as the Cadillac of keyboard keycaps.
• SA – A keycap profile that is tall and slightly rounded. Google says SA stands for “spherical all”.