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Kinesis Advantage360 Split Ortho Ergonomic Keyboard

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Kinesis Advantage360 Split Ortho Ergonomic Keyboard

Name: Kinesis Advantage360 Split Ortho Ergonomic Keyboard
Brand: Kinesis
SKU: kinesis-advantage360-split-ortho-ergonomic-keyboard
Price: 399 USD
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 4.714286 (7 reviews)

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Product Description

For those that type with two-part split Ergo keyboards, ergonomics are quite literally the name of the game. With the new Advantage360 board, Kinesis has taken the level of play to new heights Read More

Customer Reviews

4.7

(7 reviews)

(5)

(2)

(0)

100% would recommend to a friend

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douglascamata

Oct 1, 2022

Verified Buyer

The best keyboard there is, I love it!

There are no tricks here. You will get one of the best keyboard there is. It's feels and is rock solid. The tilting works well, the wrist rests attach magnetically and do not move around as you type throughout the day, and flashing new firmwares is a great experience that doesn't require any 3rd party software to be installed in your computer. New firmwares though requires some tinkering with Github repositories to store and build your firmware. Another website hosted in Github is used to configure the layout. I like that all this open source software is used, but it might not be intuitive for people not in the technology industry. I wish there was a simpler procedure for less technical folks. The only downsides for me, which I consider only minor annoyances, are:

I couldn't buy my keyboard with blank keycaps (I prefer them).
It requires 2 cables (and thus 2 USB ports on the computer) to charge both halves at the same time.

Having only the white backlight might be a downside for some, specially in this price range. I always turn the backlight off in my keyboards, so it's a no-brainer for me.

(Edited)

Recommends this product? Yes

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mxstbr

Sep 28, 2022

Verified Buyer

Such a great upgrade from my ErgodoxEZ

I love this keyboard already. I've been using an Ergodox EZ for many years and before that an Advantage 2, and I'm really glad to go back to the curved format, it feels so comfortable for my hands 😍

Recommends this product? Yes

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allenmhc

Sep 18, 2022

Verified Buyer

Nice update to the Advantage line, but less of standout in the world of mech. keyboards

This keyboard finally shipped and arrived just yesterday, so these are impressions from a day and change of playing around with the Advantage360. I got the Pro version w/ Dvorak PBT keys and the accompanying wrist rests. Coming from an Advantage2, Kinesis did do a bunch of custom work on this new keyboard:

New Fn layer to enable the F-keys
New Mode layer for more hardware-related modes
4 dedicated Macro buttons
Rearranging buttons so they're now all reachable from the home row position
ZMK config instead of Kinesis's bespoke config systems
Multiple tenting angles
Wrist rests are magnetic and feel much better designed than the old stickied wrist pads

If you were getting into the Advantage line today, the 360 is probably the one to get. But Kinesis isn't really the only game in town anymore, and while they're still pretty unique in the concave keyboard layout, there are now plenty of custom keyboards that are split or ortho or both. Switches are soldered and not hot-swappable (and Gateron browns are okay, though it looks like they'll soon offer custom builds w/ user-specified switches); keycaps are good but not great (PBT > the old style ABS keycaps, though); there's LED backlighting on the Pro but it's only white and kills battery; the casing is plastic (but the tenting feet are metallic and surprisingly heavy-duty); the ZMK setup and firmware flashing are pretty technical and Kinesis only provides basic instructions that are weirdly scattered throughout their website. As with most of Kinesis's keyboards, it's best to find a friend who has one to see whether the unique concave configuration is something that you're willing to acclimate to. If so, then 360 is the one to get, even with all the caveats above.

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Literal99

Oct 6, 2022

Verified Buyer

Perfect replacement for original Kinesis Advantage

Wireless, more programmable, tentable.

Recommends this product? Yes

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TravisHi

Nov 22, 2022

Verified Buyer

Kinesis giveth and taketh

First things first, is the Kinesis 360 Pro worth the price and wait? Absolutely!

If you constantly use a keyboard in a professional setting, buy a Kinesis 360. This is hands down, the best keyboard I've ever used. I purchased the 360 Pro as an upgrade to an Advantage 2 for my work. While the two seem similar, the split, tenting, general build quality and ZMK engine make a world of difference. If you know what you are doing, the Pro model is a massive upgrade from an Advantage 2. Not to mention you get a U.S. designed & assembled product. Having said that... it's not perfect:

I was lucky enough to get in to buy a Dvorak set (qwerty were all sold out within 15 minutes), that's fine though, I use Dvorak. However, there's no Dvorak layer present. I had to create that layer myself. You have to use either Kinesis' GUI or their Github workflow. Yes, I can swap the OS keyboard layout, but I'd rather the keymap on the keyboard itself (especially when it's sold with a Dvorak keycap configuration).

The home row keys don't have the same cap profile as the Advantage 2. The home row on the 360 is the same cap profile as the other keys. For me this is a big issue, so for now I'm using my old Advantage 2 home row keys on the 360. I'll likely buy a set of Advantage 2 home row keys specifically for my 360.

I'm a fan of the Advantage 2 function keys, so losing those has been noticed. I'll have to play with ZMK layers to recreate them.

The supplied keycap puller is the same garbage one that came with the Advantage 2. Annoying in a premium product like this.

The new modifier keys below the shift keys will take some getting used to.

In my Dvorak keycap set, the center modifier keys don't match the marketing material, they're blanks and they don't come in the extra keycap bag. I don't know if this is correct or if it's specific to the Dvorak pro model. Which is annoying when the Kinesis guide tells you to press "Hotkey 3".

There's no stabilizers on the 2u keys.

Backlighting is a weird choice on a battery powered keyboard. Of course I turned it off and will never use it again to save the battery life.

The profile light flashes if you're using USB mode, why? I don't care if I'm not connected via bluetooth. (you can turn the indicator lights off too, but I want to know the keyboard status e.g. layer indicator).

Some current ZMK limitations are mildly annoying.

The Github documentation isn't great for the Pro version (it looks like Kinesis is using a custom implementation of ZMK, so changing things like indicator lights is very advanced, I could be wrong though).

All in all, I think all these imperfections can be overcome (and I have already in some cases). What you get easily outweighs these issues. So for that reason, 5 stars. P.S. Drop packing wasn't great, the outer shipping box was thin and had next to no filling to stop the inner kinesis box from sliding around. Fortunately there was no product damage even though the kinesis box did get partially crushed on a corner.

(Edited)

Recommends this product? Yes

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dustmason

Sep 19, 2022

Verified Buyer

Fantastic upgrade from my Advantage 2

For the last 5 years I've used a Kinesis Advantage 2 with a stapleberg mod which allowed me to customize my keymap with QMK. I received and set up my 360 pro yesterday and I am very happy with it. The ZMK experience is fairly annoying (making edits to config files and flashing the each side of the keyboard with each change...) however now that I've ported over my previous config I love this keyboard. The fit and finish is a big step up from the Advantage 2, which always felt hollow and plasticky to me. The 360 is heavy and solid, and sounds much quieter while typing. If you're already a Kinesis Advantage fan, the 360 is a no-brainer.

Recommends this product? Yes

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clonedrad

Sep 15, 2022

Verified Buyer

First impressions: wonder whether there'll be a v2

Unit's only just arrived, so these are first impressions:

Nice look (no logo, looks pleasantly mysterious, the matte grey is an intriguingly blank surface), solid weight.
Status LEDs *very* bright, and apparently not dimmable? [EDIT: you can work around this in multiple ways]
Despite even the packaging still showing a jumper lead from one half to the other (as in the photos on the overview here), there's no way to run a USB-C cable from one half to the other when charging, so it needs *two* full cables connected to your computer to charge. And Kinesis included two _custom branded_ USB-A to USB-C cables, rather than one USB-A-to-dual-USB-C, which surely could have been an option? I'm pretty weirded out by this choice.

So: great to see this new evolution in the Advantage, but there are enough slightly-odd kinks here that I'll be quite interested to see whether it's popular enough for them to do a tweaked v2 down the line. I'd have loved a straight-up cable-only version, but eh, can't have everything. Will be curious to see whether latency between the two halves is at all noticeable. Oh, and zero points to Drop/Kinesis for not managing import duties up front; I had to pay 28% more again to the courier on top of the already steep asking price. eBay, Kickstarter, BackerKit etc. have been doing that for years now; why not you? EDIT: follow-up after a month's use: mechanically, I really like the keyboard: typing feels nice, is quieter and "bassier" than the Advantage, and feels much more solid. So top marks for build quality. Soft/firmware wise though, I'm almost inclined to take another mark off: the keyboard loses the plot several times a week, with the right half particularly completely ceasing to respond to keypresses, requiring it to be power cycled. It also seems to switch into weird modes relatively often, for example locking in caps but without the caps lock indicator on, and with the caps lock button itself not changing anything. The firmware doesn't support Unicode key bindings either, which is a little frustrating, but this might be a systemic issue for all keyboards: as far as I can see, the only way to actually get Unicode characters from keypresses is to bind a key with an OS-specific Unicode macro (e.g. control-alt-U followed by the character code on Linux). That feature's available in a branch of the ZMK config tool that Kinesis don't yet incorporate, but because it's OS-specific it is less useful than one would hope. For those who already have an Advantage, the extra function key buttons are a mixed blessing: it's great not to have the awful randomly-mis-or-double-firing rubber function keys any more, but if you're a heavy F-key user then I could see this getting frustrating quickly. As is, pretty much every time I use an F-key I need to look at the keyboard (and I've been a touch typist for 40 years and found Dvorak took only a fortnight to learn); hopefully this will fade. Having the function key activators in the outside corners is also a bit of a learning curve: it turns out that being on the edge of the keyboard was how I located my little fingers, the shift keys and the ~`/]} keys while typing: now with "fn" sitting between that lot I'm mistyping quite often.

(Edited)

Recommends this product? Yes

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douglascamata

Oct 20, 2022

So why does the non-pro version's description say they use USB-C cable linking? Why does it only mention wireless linking for the pro version? On the non-pro version it's the right side that connects to the computer USB port, so it should literally never cease to respond. It I have the pro version, completely wireless, and it works flawlessly. I have no issues with the radio communication across halves. I am a heavy user of home-row modifier keys and shortcuts, still didn't find any of the issues that you report.

(Edited)

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clonedrad

Oct 20, 2022

douglascamataI stand corrected, sorry. I wonder whether this was less clear in media content at the start of the campaign; I asked Kinesis at the time and got no response from them, so went with the Pro on the basis that the backlight was the main differentiator from my perspective.

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Recent Activity

M_at_o

41w

And I've been waiting for over a year on this drop! @Kinesis would be willing to run more please?

kouki.monster

41w

Within 1 hour :(

Tsiklon

42w

Sold out within 2 hours of the email being sent. Again :(