Justin's First Impressions of the ZSA Voyager Keyboard

A beautiful split keyboard

~ July 11, 2024 ~

I ordered the ZSA voyager after having the Ergodox EZ for over a year. It re-ignited an interest for finding the optimal keyboard layout to balance everything I needed from a keyboard.

The first thing I did was explore the “tap and hold” feature of ZSA keyboards since it was on the default layout of the voyager. “Tap and hold” is where tapping a key gives you one key while holding it (for XXX ms) gives another key, i.e. tap a key for space, hold it for cmd. I experimented with this but found it both too cognitively demanding to think of 2 different functions on the same key as well as too inconsistent. Specifically, it’s too inconsistent to get the desired tap/hold when typing quickly where sometimes you get the “tap” key instead of the “hold” key and vice versa. This heavily breaks the flow of typing and introduces a lag whenever you attempt to “tap” but instead get a “hold”, making it seem like you didn’t even press the correct key at all. Because of this, I opted to forgo any “tap and hold” keys after experimenting with it for a day.

Next, I continued trying out different key combinations. At first, I was extremely discontent with the lack of thumb keys on the voyager (it only has 2). I was used to having many more coming from the Ergodox EZ. The thumb is the most powerful finger we have (just look at how meaty it is compared to the rest…) Thankfully, I stumbled upon this ZSA blogpost that described shifting the home row up by one in order to gain more thumb keys. When doing this method, the number of thumb keys that you could effectively hit increases from 2 to 5(!) per hand. On the bottom row, the 3 (rightmost for left keyboard, leftmost for right keyboard) keys become additional thumb keys in addition to the existing thumb cluster. The only con to these new thumb keys is that the farthest thumb cluster key becomes slightly more difficult to reach, so I wouldn’t assign it to a very commonly hit key such as space. Otherwise, the main difference with this is that you lose the top-most row of the keyboard; however, for me this is surprisingly easy to give up. I personally have avoided using this top-most row in my previous configuration since it’s quite difficult to reach most of the time, so I instead place the number keys on a separate layer that is easier to reach. So, I found it extremely easy to use this shifted home-row layout instead and am grateful for the flexibility of the voyager for allowing this.

I continued configuring my keys, opting to base it mostly on my previous ergodox EZ setup which I was quite happy with already. To summarize, it involves only 2 layers, with the primary layer containing a normal QWERTY layout for most of the keyboard. The thumb keys contain extremely frequent keys (space, backspace), the layer key (a duplicate layer switch key for each hand), and most of the pseudo-layering keys (cmd, ctrl, option). The notable exception I have to these rules is how I handle enter and shift. I keep shift in the original position, pinky key to the left of z and to the right of / even though it is a pseudo-layering key that should belong on the thumb cluster. This is mostly due to habit and since I don’t have enough keys to spare for it. However, keeping the shift key separate from the thumb cluster does have its benefits as it makes it easier to combo with other pseudo-layering keys, i.e. CMD + SHIFT + TAB. For now, I think I’m going to keep the shift key as a pinky key since the only real downside is potentially awkward hand positions when capitalizing the first letter of words (i.e. Z which requires deviating from the home row method of using your pinky for hte z key).

Next I thought about tenting my voyager. For the uninitiated, tenting just refers to angling your keyboard so that your wrists are at a more comfortable angle. Previously with my Ergodox, I had angled it on various shoeboxes and books since the built-in tenting legs didn’t give it a high enough angle. I named this method “The Shoebox Method”. While it was fun to do this for about a year, I eventually grew tired of having to manually try out different household items to get the perfect tenting angle. Thus, with my new Voyager I wanted a better approach.

The Voyager provides a fantastic alternative to the shoebox method. Since the entire backside of the keyboard is magnetic, it’s easy to stick it onto any other magnetic surface. Inspired by this Reddit post, I opted to purchase 2 of these magnetic phone stands to use for my tenting setup. Simply put, they worked perfectly out of the box. The magnetic phone stands allow me to orient the keyboards in space in any angle, and since they are indepedent they can be moved however far apart or close together. The stands feel stable, and I don’t feel any push on them when typing. The only situation where I do is when the stands are adjusted to be too low to the table leading to not enough support, although this can be easily adjusted to fix. ZSA offers a separate tripod mount which I purchased, but I feel like these magnetic phone stands are much simpler and cheaper to use (each stand is ~$20 on Amazon).

Overall, I’m extremely satisfied with the Voyager. I love the clickiness of the keys (I chose Kailh Choc Pro Red switches) since they sound like the Lego building sound effect in the old Lego Star Wars video game. I like how compact the profile of it is, and think that the number of keys they choose strikes a good balance between minimalism and functionality. I’m happy I bought it. For reference, here is my Voyager keybindings layout on Oryx