People are really opinionated about keyboards.

Like I’m a little worried about making this video And all keyboards have their merits There’s the convenience of a virtual keyboard, the no-frills functionality of a rubber dome keyboard and the pure luxury of a mechanical keyboard. You might have an opinion about which keyboard is best based on years of user experience.

But the thing about those opinions is that they’re like armpits. Everyone has them, and they all stink. In this video, we’re going to talk about what science says about the best keyboards.

And I can already hear you tapping  away at whatever you think is the   best keyboard to go on a rampage in the comments. Especially if it’s a mechanical keyboard, because you can hear those things from miles away. But go ahead.

Make my day. We’re going to settle this keyboard debate, once and for all. [intro music] Let’s start with virtual keyboards. Believe it or not, there are people who actually prefer the tablet-style variety over other kinds.

They are of course, obviously wrong. But let’s give this highly  portable option its due. Sure, it’s easier to balance the screen on your chest while you watch YouTube in bed without the bulky external keyboard in the way.

And to all the of the people that are currently doing that, that’s wild that we just predicted that, huh? I know the setup. I’ve been on the internet for a long time But studies have shown that it’s the least efficient way to type anything.

Not to mention it’s uncomfortable and probably not great for your body. We’ll get into that later. But the point is that virtual keyboards have a lot of growing to do before they make it to the top of this tier list.

One of their big drawbacks is the lack of place to put your hands. And this actually matters because it keeps your muscles engaged when they could be resting. In a paper published in the journal “Applied Ergonomics,” researchers measured muscle activity using electromyography, or EMG electrodes, placed on the participants’ shoulders and forearms while they typed on virtual, laptop, and desktop keyboards.

Typing on a virtual keyboard might have kept the participants’ finger muscles relaxed, but their trapezius muscles by the shoulders were more active. That’s the kind of long term muscle activity that has been associated with musculoskeletal disorders like carpal tunnel over time. And if you’re more of a Comfort-today-in-spite-of-discomfort-tomorrow kind of person, the questionnaires that these researchers collected also suggested that virtual keyboards were inferior to conventional ones w hen it came to the pleasantness of the typing experience.

So anyone who tells you that virtual keyboards are the best is at the very least, an outlier. Luckily, there are better alternatives. Or at least other keyboards that are better for people who type a lot.

Like laptop keyboards! Laptops have almost as much portability but way more functionality and comfort because you can actually feel the keys depressing as you push down on them. That feeling comes from rubber dome keys that are often found in laptop computers.

And the name is pretty straightforward. There’s a large rubber mat under the keys that has little compressible bubbles lying under each key. So everything is connected under the surface.

When you press down on one of these keys, it only depresses about 1 millimeter. But that same study I mentioned earlier found that even a small physical response like that is enough to increase typing efficiency by 60% and accuracy by 11% compared to virtual keyboards. Since the whole point of virtual keyboards is that there’s no physical key to push down on, they can’t absorb any of the force from your finger.

So even 1 millimeter makes a huge difference. With outcomes like that, I feel like I’ve said all I need to say about how irrefutably better rubber dome keyboards are than virtual ones. But they’re not the pinnacle of the keyboard hierarchy.

Studies have shown that typing on a laptop still isn't as efficient as typing on a desktop keyboard. And desktop computers often come with one of two kinds of keyboards, mechanical or optical. Both have fancy spring column keys, so instead of a blanket  mechanism for all of the keys like the rubber dome system, each keyboard has its own switch.

The way the switch works is what separates optical keyboards from mechanical ones. With optical keyboards, you press down and a beam of light signals that you’re activating that particular key. Mechanical keyboards are triggered by pieces of metal touching when you push the key down.

Mechanical keyboards are famously loud, and people have strong feelings about them. A publication from the Mechanical Engineering Department of Marquette University surveyed people on their keyboard preferences and concluded that “​​participants either  emphatically liked or disliked” mechanical keyboards, while they were more neutral  about rubber-dome keyboards. So science says this is  the most divisive keyboard.

But some researchers have suggested that the incredibly obnoxious, I mean robust, sound that  comes with these switches, may be worth it. The Marquette engineers noted that the auditory feedback you get when you press down on a switch and hear a loud clickety-clack may be one reason people type more effectively on these keyboards than others. The idea is that there’s a psychological  component to accurate typing.

If you get some kind of sign that you successfully pressed a key, then you’ll know when your finger didn’t quite get where you wanted it to go and you need to try again. But a study from the Haptic Interface Research Laboratory at Purdue University found that you won’t get that effect just from sounds. They compared how people responded to hearing those kinds of signals and feeling them.

And they found that the distinct feeling of pressing down on a mechanical keyboard informed people that they successfully typed something more than an associated sound. Participants in the study typed 14 more words per minute and were slightly more accurate when they got physical feedback rather than auditory feedback. So, although you can find publications that defend the annoying  sound of someone typing away at a mechanical keyboard, it doesn’t seem like it does much but drive everyone around you up a wall.

Which is really an argument for optical keyboards, which give you a similar feeling to mechanical keyboards with a little less of the maddening noise. And since the feeling of pressing down on a key does help you type, researchers have tried ways to use that knowledge to level the playing field across all of these keyboards. They’ve attempted to create that effect in virtual keyboards by adding vibrations.

It’s just tough to make you feel like you’re pressing a key that isn’t actually there because everyone has a different threshold for detecting vibrations. So you might get that feeling  from a little vibration while the person sitting next to you needs a bit more before it  really registers for them. And even if they did provide the same psychological aid, vibrations from a virtual keyboard still aren’t the same as  physically pressing a key.

When you push a key down IRL, you’re using force. In fact, you’re probably using about 2 to 5 times more force than you need to. Especially when your fingers are really flying.

All of that extra force going into keyboards can be tough on the body and put you at risk for developing musculoskeletal disorders, or at least becoming fatigued. Another advantage of mechanical keyboards is that they’re often shaped differently from virtual and laptop keyboards. They might have a specific slope to help relieve some of the strain on your wrists.

Or be split in half to help ease the strain on your forearms. But they’re not the only keyboards that come in cool shapes. There’s a variety of keyboards designed for people with different needs.

For people typing with one hand, there are one-handed keyboards. Yeah, the entire keyboard’s half the size of a laptop keyboard. For people working with no hands or limited mobility, there are programmable keyboards that allow you to create macros.

That way, you can press fewer keys to accomplish the same goal. Just like in excel, you can create a series of keystrokes that automatically run with the press of a single button. For people who need larger or different colored keys to see or mentally process the different options in front of them, there are large print, high contrast, and multicolor keyboards.

And those are just the options today, in 2024. The future of keyboards is even cooler. For example, we may be able to use the energy that people put into their keyboards to make self-powered computers.

This idea isn’t something you can buy at the store just yet, but it has been tested in the lab. A 2021 paper in the journal “Nano Energy” outlined how researchers generated electricity from little magnets and coils built into the keys. So the best keyboard of the future might be the one that extends your computer’s battery life.

For now, which keyboard is better for you depends on who you are and what you’re doing. If you’re on the move all day, the rubber dome keyboard of a laptop might be just fine. If you don’t have a wide range of motion, you might find a more adapted keyboard handy.

And if you’re alone and don’t mind the noise, feel free to wail away on a mechanical keyboard. But overall, optical keyboards are the best. You can fight me in the comments.

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