{"id":438,"date":"2026-11-07T01:04:43","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T01:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/?p=438"},"modified":"2026-11-07T01:04:43","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T01:04:43","slug":"review-of-the-svalboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/?p=438","title":{"rendered":"Review of the Svalboard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my previous post,<\/a> I discussed the rare condition known as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. As a TL;DR– this ailment caused the muscles in my hands to atrophy, leading to severe pain with many basic actions, especially around computer use. The condition is, hopefully reversible, but will take years of effort yet to fully heal from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That post discussed voice control tech. But with the limited use of my hands I have, I can still do some things– more things thanks to my Svalboard, the most ergonomic keyboard ever created!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Svalboard<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Svalboard<\/a> is a wildly innovative keyboard design, based on the Datahand of old. The author, Claussen, realized that he could not continue repairing his Datahand, and decided to devote his time to designing a true successor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The stock image of the Svalboard<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The original Datahand design, from the 90s<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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My Svalboard, which I am using to write this sentence<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Svalboard came out just in time (with the first models being released in 2024, and continuous innovations ongoing) to serve me, having made my order in late 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The basic idea behind the Svalboard is that finger movement on traditional keyboards is unreasonably high, and, in fact, impossible to sustain once a certain threshold of hand damage is sustained, for one reason or another. Just look at how the hands need to move to write one sentence on my previous keyboard, a Kinesis Freestyle Pro, as I write the sentence “This is a sentence, with many words and expressions in it”:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you get instead is a set of 5 keys (7 on the thumb) that are like a sort of joystick you sit in; each direction is a different keyboard key. The default Svalboard layout is a derivative of QWERTY, which makes adaptation a little easier. The website explains this in more detail with a very cool interactive 3D graphic: https:\/\/svalboard.com\/pages\/the-layout<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t skip over that link! Click on it! It helps make sense of all this!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Many ergonomic keyboards have introduced the idea of a thumb cluster, realizing that on most keyboards our most versatile finger, the thumb, wastes away doing nothing but hitting one key between the two of them, the spacebar. My first encounter with this was the ZSA Moonlander a few years ago, but I was ultimately unsuccessful in learning how to use that keyboard. One of the big problems I had with it was that the thumb cluster design was impossible to actually use with my hand layout; my thumbs were simply not big enough to reach all the keys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Svalboard thumb cluster is much better designed; every key is designed to be activated with a different muscle in the thumb. The “pad” key is pressed by pushing your finger pad down; the “nail” key, by mashing your nail upwards; the “knuckle” key, with the knuckle, and the “up” and “down” keys by moving up and down, respectively. Have a look:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The Svalboard is meant to be printed in ABS, or PLA, if you like your $1000 precision-engineered device to melt in a hot car. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of my thumb keys were missing when the Svalboard arrived; turns out this was a skill issue as I found them over two weeks later in a bizarre place. As far as I know, I’m the first person to print replacements using ASA, as it’s what I had on hand. I used Prusament ASA on the Prusa Core One; the result has been so dimensionally accurate that I have not had the magnets fall out despite not using glue in the year I’ve had this.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The mouse is done using two trackballs that you can move your fingers to reach. This is brilliant and something absolutely everyone should pay attention to; the movement needed to bring your hand from a keyboard to a mouse is practiced thousands of times a day and no one notices how awful that is<\/em>. Even the most “ergonomic” of most keyboards make zero concession to this. That motion was one of the first that set off pain alarms as my illness progressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It does have a drawback that to use the mouse keys, one has to press a button while moving the trackball or shortly after releasing it. In practice this is pretty awkward, and causes a lot of misclicks or accidental presses of the spacebar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typing is slow. I have taken a probably 30-50% hit of speed, which seems to be the norm. I’ve recovered a lot of that speed with Talon Voice for longer form dictation, but I’m still just slower at all this than I used to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mouse movement is still painful, especially scrolling. Thanks to the open source firmware, I’ve written multiple bespoke firmware mods to try and shift scrolling around to various different muscles depending on how they’re feeling. Because the Svalboard is designed around individual muscles, this is possible and practical! I have a few different ways to make these motions that I actuate depending on which muscles are feeling up to it that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I LOVE<\/strong> my Svalboard!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Svalboard is not a magic bullet. I am only capable of using it so much in a given week, based on how I’m physically performing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could go on and on about the mechanical engineering and my various layout mods and so on, but in short, it makes it possible <\/strong>for me to sustain longer-term inputs over the course of an average week. Yes, it is slower than a traditional keyboard, but the difference is between using a keyboard and mouse for an hour (maybe) before running out of energy, and using a Svalboard for much, much longer. (With Talon Voice in the mix too, I can push even further.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want an RSI-aware keyboard you cannot buy a product better than this today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and did I mention there’s a hyper active community on Discord with the original designer and multiple volunteers actively responding to any and all questions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Score: 11\/10, makes it possible for me to use a computer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Buy a Svalboard here<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post was not sponsored or encouraged in any way by the company. I just wrote it because I like it that much.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TL;DR: I love it!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":476,"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nocoffei.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}