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Falbatech ErgoDox (Wooden Case)

Cool but cautionary tale about second hand boards

I recently tried out a second-hand Falbatech ErgoDox with a wooden case. The keyboard featured a columnar layout with minimal stagger and thumb clusters that seemed inspired by Kinesis keyboards. While the wooden palm rest was a nice touch and made typing more comfortable, the thumb cluster design wasn't optimal - only two, maybe three, buttons per thumb were practically usable. Being an older model, it came with soldered blue switches (very clicky!) and used micro-USB.

The biggest issue I encountered was with the software - the previous owner claimed it worked with Oryx (ZSA's software), but this wasn't officially supported and caused some laggy behavior, especially with mouse movement. After some back-and-forth with both Falbatech and ZSA support, I managed to get it working better, but it wasn't ideal.

Despite being a 6-year-old board, it's still relevant and configurable, making it a decent entry point into ergo keyboards - if you can handle the soldered on switches.

Pros

  • Wooden case gives it a clean, premium look
  • Built-in palm rest adds comfort
  • Still configurable despite age
  • Good introduction to ergonomic keyboards

Cons

  • Suboptimal thumb cluster design
  • Soldered switches (no hot-swap)
  • Software compatibility issues, Oryx is not officially supported
  • Micro-USB connection