This Keyboard Makes You Type Backwards! - Yogitype
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,309 words · ~6 min read
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so you bought yourself an ergonomic keyboard spending not only hundreds of
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dollars but also countless hours trying to master typing on the darn thing
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but like that's fine i guess right you can't put a price on health
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but hold on a minute what happens when you're not at your
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regular desk most of the ergonomic keyboards that we've tested have been
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large and cumbersome enough that you wouldn't want to travel with them so
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what you're just doomed to aggravate your repetitive strain injury
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no my friends for there is a light at the end of your carpal tunnel
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introducing yogi type the foldable ergonomic keyboard
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but is this thing a direct path to keyboard nirvana
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or is it more like downward dog
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speaking of nirvana today's video is brought to you by tunnelbear tunnelbear
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tunnelbear.com LTT
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the yogi type comes in a bougie carrying case that will absolutely make people
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want to be your friend and inside you'll find the base wrist pads and the keypad
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setup is a snap at first it might seem like you're
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typing upside down or something since you're looking at the underside of the
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keyboard as you type but actually the yogi type is kind of
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like the safe type keyboard that we checked out before
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except on steroids the main idea of
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having a vertically standing keyboard like this is to prevent what's called
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pronation that's when the two bones in your forearm criss-cross pinching tissue
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and blood vessels of course though having the keys on the
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side makes them harder to see and
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let's be honest even the touchiest of touch typists will
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look at the keyboard sometimes but instead of janky rearview mirrors
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the inward angle of the key modules allowed yogi type's creators to
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implement a much more elegant visual aid colored leds and you can even switch
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them off if you prefer and this angle has some ergonomic
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benefits as well helping with extension and finger relaxation
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speaking of relaxation the included wrist pads are super cushy easy to
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adjust and the best part is they slide so they don't inhibit your natural
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movements this is so much better than having to hold your arms up the whole
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time like on the safe type my only gripe is that you can't adjust
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their height and i think that they're a little bit too tall to fully alleviate
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the last ergonomic pitfall ulnar deviation
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okay so this is all quite positive so far but what's it like to actually type
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on this thing well at first it wasn't too bad since
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they've got tactile guides for both your index and pinky fingers
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as well as this sort of inexplicable one on the eight key and most of the keys
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are in the same relative position as they are on a regular keyboard
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most of them i mean hey i get it this is a 10 keyless
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board and there's no room for keys on the foldable base so you're just gonna
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have to get used to the more obscure keys like home and end having new homes
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on the end but what about non-obscure keys
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they move the apostrophe key to no man's land and backspace a key that i use a
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lot more than i'd like to admit though probably still less than i should has
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been moved to right beside the p key which means that when you make a mistake
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typing on this strange new keyboard you have to rectify it by using your pinky
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in unfamiliar territory which often leads to making even more mistakes
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making you so unproductive that you just end up putting the yogi type in a bin
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under your desk for two weeks while you review other stuff
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but Linus backspace has to go somewhere doesn't it well of course it does
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and my vote is to take over some of that space bar real estate this would not
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only flatten the learning curve but also make it more ergonomic since you have
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way more power up here than you do with your little finger but i'm actually not
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going to stop there as is the space keys are positioned to be pressed with the
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base of your finger which works and is actually kind of innovative but it does
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disrupt your index finger's ability to continue typing so our preference would
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be to strike the space and backspace keys with the thumb like you do on the
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kinesis advantage 2 or the ergodox except that these bloody joysticks are
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in the way not that thumbsticks are a bad idea
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inherently so these are for controlling the mouse cursor page scrolling and
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right and left clicks you can even switch between left and right handed
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mouse configurations right on the board and i'm positive that there are some
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users out there who need to be able to do that from a neutral position
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the problem is that the mouse is effectively unusable it has crazy
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acceleration unruly steering and i'm not sure if our right stick is broken but we
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had trouble moving it at all without highlighting everything
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if they insist on keeping the onboard mouse i would suggest replacing the
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joysticks with marble-sized trackballs or something like how cool would that be
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one last complaint did anybody else notice that the keys on
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this side are staggered and the keys on this side are all
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aligned wtf
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anyway should you buy this keyboard then at
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about a three hundred and fifty dollars it's 60 dollars more than the
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awful safe type but is better in just about every way
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including the switches this one is way less mushy
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though with that said the advantage too is the same price is mechanical and
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though it doesn't fold up it is portable in the sense that all the macros and the
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layouts that you program onto it are saved on board
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so i wouldn't say that it sucks
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but the yogi type has enough small things wrong with it at this point that
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giving it our full endorsement would be
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a bit of a stretch which can't be said about squarespace
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features including lots of gorgeous templates the ability to use commerce on
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actually in my talking points that's just my personal experience with
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squarespace so head over to squarespace.com forward slash LTT and
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use code LTT to get 10 off your first purchase why not have a website go try
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it out today so thanks for watching guys if this
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video sucked you know what to do but it was awesome hit that like button get subscribed or
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maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also link down there
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is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum
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which you should totally join