I found a good as new white Glove80 (Choc Brown) for a price that is far too low. I am normally not a fan of white hardware, but I think the white Glove80 looks pretty nice. Found out through the MoErgo Discord that there is a white Logitech Ergo M575 that goes really well with it.
The Advantage360 does not really improve over the Advantage2, in some respects it's a step forward (variable split/tenting), in other respects it's a step back (tiring switches, Bluetooth connectivity issues), and in many respects it's stuck in a 30 year old design (same key wells, same thumb cluster where I can only reach 2 keys per thumb without weird stretches or moving my hand).
The Glove80 is really a step forward in many aspects
better key wells, better thumb cluster, better portability, etc. It's a contoured keyboard that takes all the lessons of the Kinesis Advantage and improves over it.
Great to see this on RTINGS! I don't agree with their assessment of the build quality though. The Glove80 is very light, which may give an impression of subpar materials, etc. But I was surprised how sturdy and nicely built it is. Also, looking at the competition, at least it's not a (literal) echo chamber like the Kinesis Advantage2 and even though the 360 Pro might look more robust, it quickly gets scratches from the original palm pads.
Contoured boards are great. Once I had my first Kinesis Advantage, there was no way back to flat keyboards.
Got my Glove80 yesterday ๐. Still too early for a proper review, but loving it so far. The transition from a Kinesis Advantage is straightforward , the pinky columns feel easier to reach which is a definite improvement.
I have been using KinT controllers in my Advantage2 keyboards. However, I have been a bit worried about the availability of Teensy MCUs. I have been using Teensy LCs, but they are pretty much out of stock until 2024 and may never get in stock again. Teensy 4.0 and 4.2 controllers go for 30-40 Euro, which is pretty insane in a world of 4 Euro Raspberry Pi Picos.
At any rate, I'd like to keep some spares in case one of the controllers breaks. Moreover, I have been wishing for USB-C, since I am a Mac user. Luckily, /u/dj_edit made a KinT fork that uses the Black Pill microcontroller that is readily available for a few bucks and best of all has USB-C.
So, this week I got the PCBs and converted my first Advantage from vanilla KinT to KinT Black Pill:
I also ported their Vial support over to QMK, which required some changes to work with the latest QMK (mostly porting over stuff to info.json):
https://github.com/danieldk/qmk_firmware/tree/danieldk/keyboards/kinesis/kintbp
The USB-C mount is one from the series of mounts that I found on Amazon and discussed in this Reddit post
You missed the original contoured keyboard, Maltron: http://www.maltron.com/store/p20/Maltron_L90_dual_hand_fully_ergonomic_%283D%29_keyboard_-_US_English.html
I have/had a Dactyl, Advantage2, and Advantage360, but the Glove80 is definitely my favorite!