Why I Like Small Keyboards | Sam Smith28 Jun 2026<br>I use my keyboards a lot, my job as a software engineer involves quite a lot of<br>typing, I also spend quite a lot of my spare time in front of a computer. I’ve<br>been daily driving small keyboards for a while and have been enjoying doing so.<br>Here’s a bit about which keyboards and why I like them.<br>I built my first keyboard in 2014, a 44 key<br>Atreus. I used my school’s laser cutter to<br>cut sheets of clear acrylic for the case, hand-wired all the keys and diodes to<br>a microcontroller board, and made liberal use of a hot glue gun. I spent a good<br>while learning the layout, which was made more difficult by the blank key caps<br>I’d chosen – mostly because they were the cheapest available. I kept using it<br>for a while but would increasingly switch back to a more standard 60%1<br>board, I was playing a lot of DotA at the time which was tricky with the<br>smaller keyboard, until the Atreus just stayed in the drawer.<br>In 2020 I found out about the Corne<br>keyboard, a 42 key split keyboard. I also got<br>my first software job at around the same time which felt like a good excuse for<br>a new keyboard, so got to work ripping apart the old Atreus for its switches and<br>key caps, and since custom PCBs have gotten a lot cheaper I could get both a<br>nice tidy circuit board as well as a sort of case made the same way2. Both<br>the improved ergonomics of the split layout and me having less time for and<br>interest in DotA meant the Corne stuck around. I also find the 3x6 layout and<br>3 thumb keys per side much more comfortable than the Atreus’ 4x5 layout with one<br>thumb key.<br>One of my later Cornes<br>The argument I most commonly see against small keyboards is something along the<br>lines of “I’m a programmer, I need access to all those symbols” or “I use the<br>function keys all the time”. To me this argument seems backwards, you want the<br>keys you use the most to be as close to the home row as possible, meaning that<br>you don’t need to move your entire hand to reach them.<br>For example, to press the opening bracket ( key, something I’ve been<br>doing a lot of since I started writing Clojure professionally last year, on a<br>standard keyboard you hold the shift key with your pinky and then reach two rows<br>up from the home row to press the 9 key. To do the same on my Corne,<br>I hold the lower key with my left thumb to activate the lower layer,<br>and then press the o key just one row away from home with my right<br>ring finger, which is much more comfortable.<br>Or as another example, instead of having to reach three rows up from the home<br>row to the function row, which for me means moving my entire hand, with my corne<br>I simply hold the raise key to activate the upper layer and then I<br>have access to all of the function keys easily.<br>The big downside to using a keyboard like this is learning where all these keys<br>are, particularly the ones you don’t use very often. Having the symbols and<br>function keys you do use often available on another layer close to the home row<br>is great, but for the keys you don’t use often it’s nice to be able to look down<br>and just see that key, reach over and press it. Standard keyboards optimise for<br>accessability and ease of use, having more keys means it’s easier to know where<br>to find everything. A smaller keyboard makes more sense for those willing to<br>learn the layout in order to type more efficiently3.<br>Some people take this idea further, with 36 key keyboards that eschew the outer<br>most column of keys to reduce the burden on the pinkies. There are tricks to get<br>more utility out of the most accessable keys, like using home row<br>modifiers. I haven’t tried going<br>that far yet but it is interesting – I have found 42 keys to be a sweet spot<br>giving both the benefits I’ve explained above, as well as being similar enough<br>to a standard keyboard that it hasn’t impacted my ability to type on anything<br>else.<br>Keyboards are often sized using percentages. A standard full sized<br>keyboard has just over 100 keys, so the percentage reflects roughly how many<br>keys the board has. ↩︎
I say sort of case because it was just a top plate and base plate<br>made like circuit boards just without any actual circuits printed on them.<br>The sides were left open. ↩︎
I’m not someone that’s typing numbers into a spreadsheet all day but<br>for those people that are a numpad is useful. If I needed one I would add a<br>dedicated numpad next to my small keyboard, rather than switch back to full<br>size. ↩︎
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