People are really opinionated
about keyboards.
Like I’m a little worried
about making this video
And all keyboards have their merits
There’s the convenience
of a virtual keyboard,
the no-frills functionality
of a rubber dome keyboard
and the pure luxury
of a mechanical keyboard.
You might have an opinion
about which keyboard is best
based on years of user experience.
But the thing about those opinions
is that they’re like armpits.
Everyone has them, and they all stink.
In this video,
we’re going to talk about what science
says about the best keyboards.
And I can already hear you tapping away at whatever you think is the
best keyboard to go on a rampage in the comments.
Especially if it’s a mechanical keyboard,
because you can hear those things
from miles away.
But go ahead. Make my day.
We’re going to settle this keyboard debate,
once and for all.
[intro music]
Let’s start with virtual keyboards.
Believe it or not,
there are people who actually prefer
the tablet-style variety over other kinds.
They are of course, obviously wrong.
But let’s give this highly portable option its due.
Sure, it’s easier to balance
the screen on your chest
while you watch YouTube in bed
without the bulky external keyboard in the way.
And to all the of the people
that are currently doing that,
that’s wild that we just predicted that, huh?
I know the setup.
I’ve been on the internet
for a long time
But studies have shown
that it’s the least efficient way
to type anything.
Not to mention it’s uncomfortable
and probably not great for your body.
We’ll get into that later.
But the point is that virtual keyboards
have a lot of growing to do
before they make it to the top of this tier list.
One of their big drawbacks
is the lack of place to put your hands.
And this actually matters
because it keeps your muscles engaged
when they could be resting.
In a paper published
in the journal “Applied Ergonomics,” researchers
measured muscle activity
using electromyography,
or EMG electrodes,
placed on the participants’ shoulders and forearms
while they typed on virtual, laptop,
and desktop keyboards.
Typing on a virtual keyboard
might have kept the participants’
finger muscles relaxed,
but their trapezius muscles
by the shoulders were more active.
That’s the kind of long term muscle activity
that has been associated
with musculoskeletal disorders
like carpal tunnel over time.
And if you’re more of a
Comfort-today-in-spite-of-discomfort-tomorrow
kind of person,
the questionnaires
that these researchers collected
also suggested that virtual keyboards
were inferior to conventional ones w
hen it came to the pleasantness
of the typing experience.
So anyone who tells you that virtual keyboards
are the best is at the very least,
an outlier.
Luckily, there are better alternatives.
Or at least other keyboards that are better
for people who type a lot.
Like laptop keyboards!
Laptops have almost as much portability
but way more functionality and comfort
because you can actually feel the keys depressing
as you push down on them.
That feeling comes from rubber dome keys
that are often found in laptop computers.
And the name is pretty straightforward.
There’s a large rubber mat under the keys
that has little compressible bubbles
lying under each key.
So everything is connected
under the surface.
When you press down on one of these keys,
it only depresses about 1 millimeter.
But that same study I mentioned earlier found
that even a small physical response
like that is enough to increase typing efficiency
by 60% and accuracy by 11% compared
to virtual keyboards.
Since the whole point of virtual keyboards
is that there’s no physical key
to push down on,
they can’t absorb any of the force
from your finger.
So even 1 millimeter
makes a huge difference.
With outcomes like that,
I feel like I’ve said all I need to say
about how irrefutably
better rubber dome keyboards
are than virtual ones.
But they’re not the pinnacle
of the keyboard hierarchy.
Studies have shown that typing on a laptop
still isn't as efficient
as typing on a desktop keyboard.
And desktop computers often come
with one of two kinds of keyboards,
mechanical or optical.
Both have fancy spring column keys,
so instead of a blanket mechanism for all of the keys
like the rubberdome system,
each keyboard has its own switch.
The way the switch works
is what separates optical keyboards
from mechanical ones.
With optical keyboards,
you press down and a beam of light signals
that you’re activating that particular key.
Mechanical keyboards are triggered
by pieces of metal touching
when you push the key down.
Mechanical keyboards are famously loud,
and people have strong feelings about them.
A publication
from the Mechanical Engineering Department
of Marquette University surveyed people
on their keyboard preferences
and concluded that
“​​participants either emphatically liked or disliked”
mechanical keyboards,
while they were more neutral about rubber-dome keyboards.
So science says this is the most divisive keyboard.
But some researchers
have suggested that the incredibly obnoxious,
I mean robust, sound that comes with these switches,
may be worth it.
The Marquette engineers noted that
the auditory feedback you get
when you press down on a switch
and hear a loud clickety-clack
may be one reason people type more effectively
on these keyboards than others.
The idea is that
there’s a psychological component to accurate typing.
If you get some kind of sign
that you successfully pressed a key,
then you’ll know when your finger
didn’t quite get
where you wanted it to go
and you need to try again.
But a study from the
Haptic Interface Research Laboratory
at Purdue University found that
you won’t get that effect just from sounds.
They compared how people responded
to hearing those kinds of signals
and feeling them.
And they found that the distinct feeling
of pressing down on a mechanical keyboard
informed people that
they successfully typed something
more than an associated sound.
Participants in the study
typed 14 more words per minute
and were slightly more accurate
when they got physical feedback
rather than auditory feedback.
So, although you can find publications
that defend the annoying sound of someone typing away
at a mechanical keyboard,
it doesn’t seem like it does much
but drive everyone around you up a wall.
Which is really an argument
for optical keyboards,
which give you a similar feeling
to mechanical keyboards
with a little less of the maddening noise.
And since the feeling of pressing down
on a key does help you type,
researchers have tried ways
to use that knowledge
to level the playing field
across all of these keyboards.
They’ve attempted to create that effect
in virtual keyboards by adding vibrations.
It’s just tough
to make you feel like you’re pressing a key
that isn’t actually there
because everyone has a different threshold
for detecting vibrations.
So you might get that feeling from a little vibration
while the person sitting next to you
needs a bit more before it really registers for them.
And even if they did provide
the same psychological aid,
vibrations from a virtual keyboard
still aren’t the same as physically pressing a key.
When you push a key down IRL,
you’re using force.
In fact, you’re probably using
about 2 to 5 times more force
than you need to.
Especially when your fingers
are really flying.
All of that extra force going into keyboards
can be tough on the body
and put you at risk
for developing musculoskeletal disorders,
or at least becoming fatigued.
Another advantage of mechanical keyboards is that
they’re often shaped differently
from virtual and laptop keyboards.
They might have a specific slope
to help relieve some of the strain on your wrists.
Or be split in half
to help ease the strain on your forearms.
But they’re not the only keyboards
that come in cool shapes.
There’s a variety of keyboards
designed for people with different needs.
For people typing with one hand,
there are one-handed keyboards.
Yeah, the entire keyboard’s
half the size of a laptop keyboard.
For people working
with no hands or limited mobility,
there are programmable keyboards
that allow you to create macros.
That way, you can press fewer keys
to accomplish the same goal.
Just like in excel,
you can create a series of keystrokes
that automatically run
with the press of a single button.
For people who need larger
or different colored keys
to see or mentally process
the different options in front of them,
there are large print, high contrast,
and multicolor keyboards.
And those are just the options today, in 2024.
The future of keyboards is even cooler.
For example,
we may be able to use the energy
that people put into their keyboards
to make self-powered computers.
This idea isn’t something
you can buy at the store just yet,
but it has been tested in the lab.
A 2021 paper in the journal “Nano Energy”
outlined how researchers generated electricity
from little magnets and coils
built into the keys.
So the best keyboard of the future
might be the one that extends
your computer’s battery life.
For now,
which keyboard is better for you
depends on who you are
and what you’re doing.
If you’re on the move all day,
the rubber dome keyboard of a laptop
might be just fine.
If you don’t have a wide range of motion,
you might find a more adapted keyboard handy.
And if you’re alone and don’t mind the noise,
feel free to wail away
on a mechanical keyboard.
But overall, optical keyboards are the best.
You can fight me in the comments.
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