My writing experience with the ZSA Voyager keyboard

Recently I got my ZSA Voyager keyboard, and after struggling for the first few days, I’ve finally found myself at a decent pace regarding my workflow.

The First Week

I wrote this part of the post the first day since I received my ZSA Voyager, and it was difficult getting used to it. Maybe I could list the top reasons slowing me down since the beginning.

1. I rely a lot on my keyboard for navigating windows using yabai or hyprland. Using workspaces, tmux, web browsing with Vimium; all these require me to use Ctrl combinations, the first time I connected the keyboard it took me a while to even open the browser to go to the welcome site.
2. Letter B. I’m very used to typing the letter B with my right hand; can’t really do this with any split keyboard.
3. The thumb cluster. Pressing enter and backspace with my thumbs has been confusing.
4. Ortholinear does feel more comfortable, but I keep missing keys like C or M due to this.

Despite initial concerns, day two felt more comfortable reaching up to 60 WPM in prose with a little bit of effort.

The biggest change here was switching the flat F and J keys for their bump variant. This was an issue because of the ortholinear layout and low profile, so keys felt lighter making me get lost while positioning my fingers.

While I wrote my experience (draft for this post), even pressing Enter to write a new line was confusing. And specially when using neovim, navigating the file was a challenge.

On the other hand, being able to place my desk microphone or my notebook right between the two halves has been great.

On the third day I started using home row mods¹, and while I’ve been conflicted by it, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable without them for my personal needs.

Pros

• I can use modifiers without moving from the home row.
• Given the size of the Voyager, it’s not easy to map every modifier. This is important because I rely heavily on shortcuts, with pretty much every modifier.

Cons

• Timing can be very tricky to get right, so the correct keystroke is sent. I’m still finding the sweet spot here.

Other changes in the first week include:

• Leveraging the use of layers for common keybinds like switching workspaces (Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, etc) and starting to feel more comfortable overall. It’s also my first time with a programmable keyboard, there’s just so many changes between this and my previous keyboard.
• Moving braces pairs to more memorable positions in the symbols layer.
• Added a gaming layer without home row mods.

Currently

I still miss a couple uppercase letters when using home row mods, but the overall experience has been great. Not using the numbers row (I could probably repurpose it), no weird position for my pinky to reach Ctrl, combo keys for navigation, and just the overall comfort of it being split.

If your only purpose is to alleviate the stress from your shoulders just get a cheaper split keyboard. In comparison to those, this keyboard is on a different league and serve power users better. There’s lots of people who don’t touch type, and this wouldn’t be the best alternative for them.

The first week I was averaging 59~ wpm in prose, while the test I just did without warmup or stressing at all was 69 wpm. Still not as fast as I was on a regular qwerty layout, but not half bad.

This post focused on my writing experience the first few days with these many changes. I might review the keyboard itself in a different post or video.