Glove80 Keyboard

Video Review

Contoured keywell (Bowl-Shaped Surface)

The keys form a overall concave bowl-shaped surface, so that your fingers dip onto the keys. No bending up the wrist, and the contoured keywell fits the different lengths of fingers.

• If you never used a ortholinear layout keyboard (where the key columns and rows are form a rectangular grid, not slanted or stagger), might take you 3 weeks to adopt.
• If you have used a columnar layout keyboard (such as ergodox), it'll just take few days to adopt.

Thumb keys

The thumb keys, fixed many problems of traditional keyboard. Thumbs are powerful, and all the modifier keys such as Ctrl Alt ❖ Window ⌘ command are now right under your thumbs. Also, the Backspace is right there, one of the most frequently used key. No more twisting your right wrist or moving hand to hit the top right of keyboard.

In comparison to the Kinesis Advantage2 Keyboard, the glove80 is a better design of the thumb keys. Better physical design, and better default functions on them.

In particular, Shift is placed on the thumbs, available for both hands. (instead of the pinky on traditional position) Also, you have Ctrl Alt for both hands.

For Mac users, the keyboard comes with extra keycaps labeled ⌘ and Option , and you can program them via firmware or easily set it up via MacOS. [see Mac: Swap CapsLock Control Option Command Keys]

Low Profile

This keyboard is engineered to be very low profile, so that the keyboard base does not add much height to the keys.

USB Port and Power

• At the back, there is a USB-C port, and a power switch button. The port and switch are on BOTH left-hand-side and right-hand-side parts.
• The power button is a nice push-in. It stays down when its in on-status.
• The left keyboard is the main part. Plug USB to that part if you want wired.
• The left and right talk via latest bluetooth (not proprietary wireless protocols).

Removable Palm Rest

To remove the palm rest, just unscrew it at the back. Those are thumb screws, you can twist it to screw. No need screwdriver. Very easy to remove and screw back on.

Adjustable Feet for Tenting

To ajust tenting angle (rasing the middle of keyboard), just twist the feet. Excellent design. (by default, it's tented about 8 degrees.) It comes with extra long screw feet if you want it really slanted.

The MoErgo (Magic) Key

The lower left corner key with the MoErgo logo is the “magic” key. It is a key for selecting bluetooth device and show battery status, and other keyboard config.

Show Bluetooth Connection Status

Press the MoErgo key. (lower left key on left-hand-side)

The 4 keys on the left of thumb indicates 4 Bluetooth profiles:

 Shift Control
Bksp Delete Alt

The Alt indicate USB wired connection.

Color meaning:

• White: paired, connected, and is the current output device
• Green: paired, connected, but not being used for output.
• Red: paired but not connected
• Purple: not paired.

Connecting to Bluetooth

you can connect up to 4 bluetooth devices.

To connect:

• Press and release the MoErgo key. Those colored purple are unpaired bluetooth profiles.
• Select a unpaired bluetooth profile, by: Hold the MoErgo key and press one of Shift or Ctrl or Backspace or Delete ⌦. (they are the 4 keys on the left of the left thumb area.)
• Now goto your operating system, bluetooth settings, glove80 shoud show up there. Select connect.

Reset Bluetooth

• To reset all Bluetooth profiles, hold the MoErgo key and press F1

Key Switch Used

key switch is

• 
  Kailh Choc Switch

Battery

Show Battery Status

To show battery levels, press the lower left key on left part.

• The lights on the QWERT row, shows the battery levels for left-hand-side.
• The lights on the ASDF row, shows the battery levels for right-hand-side.

Battery Life

Assuming lights off, and the device is switched on 24/7 the life is around 3 weeks on left hand and 3 months on right.

Charging Battery

Each hand has a battery.

To charge each part, just plugin the USB-C to USB-A cable.

According to the manual, charging time is 3 to 4 hours.

Backlight

Turn on backlight

press MoErgo+t

Change hue

press MoErgo+e or MoErgo+d

Change brightness

press MoErgo+r or MoErgo+f

Change saturation

press MoErgo+w or MoErgo+s

Turn on flashing effect

press MoErgo+g

Change flash speed

press MoErgo+q for faster, MoErgo+a for slower

It's full RGB. you can set it to white light by changing the saturation.

Glove80 Keyboard Layout

Keycaps

The keycaps are custom designed by MoErgo.

• Keycap material is POM plastic (won't wear-shine, won't age-yellow) [see Keycap Material: ABS, PBT, PVC, POM]
• Keycap top surface shape is cylindrical concave. [see Keycap Profiles]
• Key labels are laser marked. (never wears off) Key Label Printing Tech

Changing Keycaps (Add Mac Command Option Keycaps)

WARNING: Be very careful when pulling the keycaps, you may pull out the key switch and damage it. Choc switch keycaps are very tight. When you pull a keycap, be sure to use the bundled wench to hold down the switch under it.

Firmware

The firmware is open source ZMK. https://zmk.dev/

Programing the Keyboard (Create Custom Key Layouts and Key Macros)

The programing keyboard is tedius. (but other keyboards with bluetooth and power of zmk isn't doing better.) Also, you need to register an account (if you don't want to register an account, you can use the web configurator to generate .dtsi file (devicetree-source-include file) then use your local compiled ZMK software to generate a firmware file. See ZMK doc for detail.)

For detail on how to do it, see the manual. But here's an outline:

Configure and Create a New Firmware File

1. To program the keyboard, goto https://my.glove80.com/ (do register an account there.)
2. Configure the key layouts on the website.
3. Click the button to generate a firmware file for the layout you created. The file name ends in .UF2. Browser will ask you to save it.

Copy the file to left-hand-side

1. Turn on both keyboard parts (press the button on the back)
2. Connect the left-hand-side keyboard to computer by the USB-C cable.
3. Press Magic+Escape (on your current layout, if you moved them) to put the left-hand-side in bootloader mode. Now, a drive will show up on your operating system. On Microsoft Windows, it shows up as E: drive.
4. Copy the uf2 file into the drive. Drag and drop it.
5. After the copying is done, the drive disappears.

Copy the file to right-hand-side

1. Turn on both keyboard parts (press the button on the back)
2. Connect the right-hand-side keyboard to computer by the USB-C cable.
3. Press Magic+' (on your current layout, if you moved them) to put the right-hand-side in bootloader mode. Now, a drive will show up on your operating system. On Microsoft Windows, it shows up as E: drive.
4. Copy the uf2 file into the drive. Drag and drop it.
5. After the copying is done, the drive disappears.

Load the New File on left-hand-side

1. Turn off the keyboard (press the button at the back)
2. Hold Magic+e and turn on the keyboard. (on your current layout, if you moved them)

Load the New File on right-hand-side

1. Turn off the keyboard (press the button at the back)
2. Hold PageDown+i and turn on the keyboard. (on your current layout, if you moved them)

Now, your keyboard is using your new config, on both keyboard parts.

Xah Layout

• 
  Glove80 Layout for Xah Fly Keys

Unboxing

In the box is also:

• One USB-C to USB-A cable. (about 1 meter length)
• One bag of keycaps, of Mac's ⌘ command and ⌥ option labels, and some others and 4 blanks. (there is a key puller too for changing key caps)
• One bag of screws and a tiny wrench. For extra tenting.
• One a bag of feet. For extra tenting.

Glove80 Manual

• glove80-user-guide.pdf

Conclusion

• As the physical build, and design, it's excellent.
• Typing on it has the best experience. i'd say slightly better than kinesis advantage 2.
• The user interface for programing the keyboard is not very good.

At over $300, it's a bit expensive, however, you don't have much choice, if you want a bowl curved surface keyboard. They are all above $300. If you want bluetooth in addition, they are above $400.

Best points:

If you never had ergo keyboard, this is a major step up. It fixed all the baggage of the mechanical Typewriters we are inherited with. [see Keyboard Design Flaws]

If you already have ergo keyboard experience, here's the better parts:

• Superb physical design. Light weight and elegant. Not huge, not bulky.
• Superb thumb keys design.
• most powerful and flexible programability of the keys. xtodo detail.
• Contoured surface.
• Nice fullsized function keys F1 F2 etc. Most ergo keyboards omit them.

Things that may not suitable for you:

• The left-hand-side and right-hand-side talk via bluetooth. This means, if you are a James Bond working for big gov with top secret of missiles, this keyboard may not be suitable. (the keyboard implement Bluetooth 5.x, which is probably the most secure wireless protocol, and is done via the open source ZMK firmware. This should be more secure than any proprietary protocol, and can be updated via firmware.)
• The lightest choice of the choc switch is choc red, with activation force of 50g. This may be too heavy if you are used to the Cherry MX Red linear (45g). (it is possible to have lighter switches, please look at official site for info on this.)

Where to Buy

• https://www.moergo.com/

• [Glove80: Rethinking split contoured ergonomic keyboard 2022-12-13 By Stephen Cheng. At https://kbd.news/Glove80-Rethinking-split-contoured-ergonomic-keyboard-1796.html ]