It prevents hand pronation by lifting your thumbs and index fingers slightly up and outwards in a gentle arch shape. It’s not possible to achieve a negative tilt and tent position at the same time, but I found tenting on its own very comfortable and natural from the start. I’ve tried out the Ergo Pro in all its positions by tucking away or extending the three rubber feet on the underside of each keyboard half. I’ve ended up with a gap of a few centimetres, although I also experimented with a wider separation and positioning my mouse between the two. You can nestle the two sides together (jigsaw puzzle fashion) or separate them by up to 50 cm, depending on how broad your shoulders are.
The keyboard comes in two separate halves, with a neat retractable audio-type cable that connects the two sides. The split spacebar, in particular, has a lovely smooth and silky action. The Ergo Pro keys felt very slightly stiffer in comparison and I noticed they have an almost papery sound. The switch mechanism is a Matias proprietary “Quiet Click” switch, which, unsurprisingly, is quieter than the Filco keyboard I was used to (with Cherry MX brown switches). The Ergo Pro, however, is a mechanical keyboard with split, tilt and tenting positions.
Mechanical keyboards, in turn, almost always have a classic layout. Ergonomic keyboards, such as the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic or Kinesis Freestyle2, almost always have a membrane mechanism (with a rubber dome under each key). The Ergo Pro combines two aspects that are rarely found together: ergonomic features and mechanical key switches.
I’m not a keyboard expert (in fact I’m only a fairly recent mechanical keyboard convert), so this report is my honest opinion of the keyboard, from one translator to another. The Keyboard Company kindly sent me an Ergo Pro to review here on my blog. Here’s an account of how I adapted to its ergonomic layout, its best features and some minor niggles. I’ve spent the last couple of months translating with a Matias Ergo Pro keyboard as part of my workstation set-up.
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