ZSA Voyager Review

For the last 6 months I’ve been using a ZSA Voyager, a built-to-order split mechanical keyboard that cost me £300, including shipping costs from Taiwan. Was this a savvy investment or pure frivolity?

Rationale

Programmers love fancy keyboards. It’s how we peacock - in fact, it’s why so many mechanical keyboards have rainbow LED backlighting. Sure, I might justify spending hundreds of pounds on a peripheral that I already own multiple alternatives to by saying that I spend thousands of hours a year with my hands on it, but really, we all know that it’s status games all the way down.

Having got that out the way, let’s agree to pretend that it’s at least 5% for “ergonomics”, and to try to realise compounding gains on the inordinate amount of time I spend typing. It turns out that once someone points out to you all the many ways in which conventional keyboards suck, it’s impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. After watching this video from Ben Vallack, I noticed every uncomfortable stretch, weird contortion and frustrating key-miss on my old Durgod board.

At roughly the same time, I was getting interested in switching to using NeoVim as my code editor and had become convinced of the potential productivity gains therein. I wanted to spend more time with my hands on my keyboard, and slowly phase out using a mouse. In order to incentivise myself, it made sense to seek out the most responsive, comfortable keyboard experience possible, and so I began my journey down the keeb rabbit hole.

I’d always heard great things about split boards, and I like the minimalist aesthetic - I essentially never use F keys and haven’t had a numpad for years. Surely I could afford to lop off a few more extraneous keys round the edges. The idea of thumb clusters was both intriguing and a bit intimidating. After all, the space bar was all my thumbs had ever known, would they be able to cope with the additional responsibility of flitting between several keys, rather than being the anchor they so excelled at?

I quickly realised I would have to at least try a split board. True enthusiasts buy build-your-own kits for a fraction of the price of pre-built boards, but I haven’t soldered anything since year 8 design and technology lessons, so I rejected that approach. There are seemingly no unanimously-loved boards in the keeb world, but the original video that nudged me in the direction of trying a splitboard was a glowing review of the ZSA Voyager. Many warn that it’s not a great choice for a first-time splitboard, but I didn’t want to repeat previous mistakes of feeling the need to upgrade again further down the line, when I could’ve saved time and money by plumping for the best-in-class option immediately.

So I chose my configuration, Striped over my 300 bucks, and waited 6 weeks for my long-distance package to arrive.

Pros

Firstly, it looks nice. It’s sleek, doesn’t take up much room, and has customisable backlighting (if you’re into that kind of thing). It’s low-profile and compact, giving it the appearance of something designed and build with thought and care.

It’s surprisingly portable too - given its small size, it’s straightforward to pack up and take with me to the coffee shop or office. I don’t feel like an asshole using it in those places either; it’s Choc-style switches are much quieter than my previously beloved MX-style ones, so I’m not worried about disturbing anyone else in my space.

Most importantly, it feels good. I am much more relaxed typing with my hands two feet apart, my shoulders open and my posture commensurately better. Any time I have to type on my laptop keyboard again I immediately feel like a gross desk-goblin. It feels like an item of quality to use; each key press is consistent and behaves as I expect, and the tactile sensations of typing with it are joyful. I find my hands doing uncomfortable things far less often, only really having to stretch for the single key on each half of the board that is furthest away from the thumb cluster. I regret previously doubting my thumbs; they are strong and dexterous and relish having their key-pressing responsibilities quadrupled. The ortholinear layout is a dramatic improvement; it now feels like all the keys are equally spaced out, rather than in clumps and stretches.

When I am in the flow of typing on this board, I feel like I am a concert pianist, ebbing and flowing through the movements of a concerto in perfect symbiosis with my instrument. It is spectacular.

Cons

With all that being said, there are downsides to this purchase. Firstly, much like the concert pianist, the only way to get proficient with this new keyboard setup is to practice a lot, and embrace sucking as part of that process. After six months I feel very comfortable and I’m typing at around 90wpm, but when I first tried the Voyager I was typing at a mere 30wpm. For the first few weeks I had to have Oryx up on my second monitor while I memorised what keys were in which layer. After two decades of only ever using my thumb to press space bar, I made a lot of mistakes with my thumb keys, including prematurely sending a lot of messages when I pressed enter rather than space, which are in the same spot on different halves of the board. I frequently found myself getting lost and having to look at my hands to work out what keys my fingers were over. Even now it’s not perfect - I still make some mistakes, and I have to move my hand to reach the - or = keys.

I also haven’t used the layout customisation as much as I expected to, and there are some keys that I still haven’t memorised, like the | or \ keys, despite those both coming up moderately often in programming. I planned to tinker and figure out the ideal setup for me - even scheming to move to Dvorak or Colemak by swapping keys one-at-a-time until my whole configuration had change. But, alas, that hasn’t happened; once the novelty of the new board wore off, it turned out there was always something else more important to fix then memorising that semi-obscure character or tweaking the layout of something that is doing the job just fine.

And also - it’s £300! You can get a perfectly functional keyboard for less than 10% of that!

Verdict

So, was it worth it? For me, yes. Right now it’s an 8/10, and I think if I invested a little more time into customising the layout, memorising the keys and some basic typing drills, it’d get to a 9/10. If you are someone who uses their keyboard a lot - for example if you’re a writer or fellow Vim enthusiast - then I think this is a great investment and absolutely worth it. For anyone else, if you have that much money burning a hole in your pocket then I suggest you donate it to charity instead, as you’d likely get more joy from that than this board.