What Are Ortholinear Keyboards (And Should You Get One)?
There seem to be all sorts of takes on the traditional keyboard design these days, from melty ergonomic models to big and bold mechanical gaming keyboards. Now with ortholinear keyboards, you have yet another decision to make about your next keyboard. What Is an Ortholinear Keyboard? Image Credit: ZSA Most keyboards, probably the ones you use every day, have a staggered layout. Look at the top line of a standard QWERTY keyboard, and you’ll see that the second row of keys, starting with “ASD’ is offset to the right of the QWERTY line, as is the next row of keys below that. Ortholinear keyboards don’t have this staggered design. Instead, each key is perfectly square with the keys around it, giving ortholinear keyboards their characteristic grid pattern layout. If your regular keyboard has a number pad, then you already know what this looks like because numpads are ortholinear. Ortholinear keyboards have been around for almost 25 years, but they’ve only started to gain signific...