> Imagine the same scene on mice. "Hey, are you tired of your ball mouse? Want an optical mouse? Well, the technology is cheap, but we're going to charge you $120, just because!!"

My, I better not tell you what a MX Master, G903 or Kone Pro Air retails for...

That said, I think you're asking too much if you expect a mk to cost about the same as a membrane keyboard; I think a 2x-3x price increase is totally reasonable considering that a membrane keyboard is trivial to assemble compared to one made of 102 individual switches, and that the production scale is so vastly different.

On the other side, I'm typing this on a Lenovo keyboard that's technically a membrane but it's so sturdy and clicky it feels pretty close to the brown-switch Cooler Master I have at home (which was definitely a cheaper mech, I think I paid $65 or so for it).

>There's no room left for full sized, affordable, practical, run of the mill, "Ford Model T" mk.

I bought a boring (by mk community standards) Filco Majestouch in 2010. I think it was around that $125 price point, but you know what, it is at least 10 times better than the keyboard I had before it and costs less than 4c per day. I wouldn't even be surprised if this thing lasted another 10 years.

Personally I don't understand why people spend thousands of dollars on new PC hardware just to use a 10$ mouse and keyboard. Of course people are free to prioritize whatever they want, and I'm not suggesting everyone should have DIY custom $400+ keyboards, but if you put a 10 year old K120 infront of me with missing keycaps, I'd be measurably unhappy while trying to use my computer.

These days you can get solid mechanical switch keyboards in the $60 to $100 range. The only downside is that they all seem to come with LED backlighting and obnoxious gamer marketing, but once you turn off the light shows they're perfectly good keyboards. I think they would qualify for "Model T" status.

They have mechanical switches but often lack N-key rollover (I think the blog post gets this wrong) and instead have a watered down form marketed as "anti-ghosting". But that's more than enough for all purposes except maybe Emacs olympics and social prestige with keyboard-philes.

I bought a Filco Majestouch 2 three years ago when I finally had to retire my 8 year old Sidewinder X4, which was a $40 membrane keyboard with deeper-than-usual key travel. I can definitely say moving from that to the Majestouch 2 has not made me a better programmer, typist, or gamer. And it hasn't helped with ergonomics either. It just feels better the same way shelling out the extra couple hundred bucks for a high end graphics card makes games feel better.

I owned an actually ergonomic split-key keyboard as well (Goldtouch) when I developed RSI-related wrist problems as a teenager and kept it around for 15 years. That keyboard made an actual difference and I would take it out of the closet whenever my wrists started acting up even from the Majestouch 2. But you don't usually see ergonomics front and center in super expensive mechanical keyboards - because IMO in that price range and in that community it hasn't been about practical concerns for a while. And that's fine - I'm not going to judge someone's choice of things to collect - but I see no practical benefit to spending substantially more on mechanical keyboards.

I bought 2 of these in tenkeyless (for work and home) and both are still in great shape. I did switch to Kinesis at work about a year later but is 9-10 years of daily use and they all look almost identical to when new.

Finding a keyboard you like is expensive but once you do they pretty much last forever. At work the Kinesis has outlasted 5 MacBooks and serval PCs. It is by far the cheapest computer peripheral when time of use is considered.

I think a lot of the interesting keyboards are really small series, and such things cost - there is such thing as "economy of scale".

The cheapest KB I've built myself was a Kyria for just over 200 EUR with cheap keycaps but relatively expensive switches - Kailh Pink, as I remember. Imagine building something like Keyboardio Model01 (https://shop.keyboard.io/products/model-01-keyboard?variant=...): You have to build a case in low numbers, you have to design and print the PCB boards, you have to order the switches (Jesse, the author of it told once, that Cherry was not even interested in talking to him due to the relatively low number of switches he could take off them) and you still have to solder and assemble it, which for small shops is a manual job. Even the most mass-produced ergonomic keyboard I know if, Kineses Advantage2 is still a very niche product.

So all the "endgame" photos of another 60% KB with "artisan" keycaps and expensive pre-lubed switches are indeed bullshit. But you can get a lot of gain out of it if you go for ergonomic keyboards, even if you get the cheapest switches and keycaps (gatreon, for example) because the ergonomic improvement you can get out of a keywell or a proper thumb cluster can be life changing. Especially if you have a predisposition for developing RSI or similar problems. But it will still not be cheap. Or you can buy one and stick to it, you don't have to do it as hobby. Buy a Kinesis Advantage and do not worry that much. If you later want to mode it, there are still multiple possibilities.

Your French is fine! :)

I own just one mechanical keyboard and it’s my daily driver, when I type lot I plug it in and off I go, otherwise I’m fine with the not so good-to-type-alot laptop keyboards. Mechanical keyboards are a good investment if you don’t go overboard and become obsessed with them. They do offer a very good feedback and are pleasant to type on. My typing error rate is the lowest on my mechanical keyboard, and I guess that says quite a bit. My mechkeb is a Leopold FC750R and couldn’t be happier with my purchase, which i expect I will own for quite some time.

Thanks for the input, I'll check it out.

Check out cloud nine. Full sized, split mechanical, and looks near identical to the Microsoft Ergo 4000. I typed full speed immediately. Still pricey, but feels like a tool to me.

I'm typing this on an Ajazz Ak33 which I've owned for several years and it's still working perfectly fine. You can find it for less than $30 on aliexpress. There are quite a few options of mechanical keyboards for less than $50 .