Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig (opens in new tab)

> If this works better for you than a Logitech or Kensington trackball, sweet, use it. But so far all the reviews are like "I've never used a trackball, but this looks cool".

Most people never saw a trackball, let alone used it.

Mainly because either your PC comes with a mouse, or you use a laptop which comes with a touchpad.

Your regular ~$50 sucks because it follows the form factor of a mouse even though you don't have to move it around. If you grew used to one then you don't notice the poor form factor, but it's awkward and still forces to move your hand away of a keyboard.

The Charybdis, Dactyl, and CCK-ball kind of address the problem by making it reachable by a thumb, but they don't eliminate it completely because it still forces you to follow an awkward user flow.

This product feels like a trackball that lets you place it where it makes sense. I think it's an improvement.

I have faith that keyboards with embedded touchpad such as the Kinesis Form fix this issue, but I'm not willing to shelf ~$300 for an experiment. I'd rather try out a split keyboard and have a boring touchpad where it feels right. Multi-finger touch gestures kind of eliminate any other flow. Hopefully keychron will consider that too.

> this new trackball will make you move your fingers (and wrists) significantly off home row.

Only if you use it off to one side or the other. Seems like it was built to live below the KB and be operated with thumbs. If that's the case, your fingers should never have to leave the home row.

Now it may interfere with KB wrist rests, but learning proper typing form (raised wrists) would solve for that.

Yes, seeing this product's very angular non-3d-printed yet-prototype design brought back memories of the days when the default portable hardware interface didn't always include a pointing device and thus there were these clip-on trackballs, like below.

Maybe some of the weirdest were things that looked like small mice that were linked and position-sensed by a bar linkage to the laptop. I can't find a reference to one tho, so maybe I'm mis-remembering?

http://xahlee.info/kbd/logitech_trackman_portable_trackball....

I've been using trackballs since the early 1980s (that was a custome-built thing attached to a DG Nova, but still). Can't go back to a regular mouse. But yeah, I don't see what this does that my current trackballs don't do, or at least that I would ever use. And it looks really awkward to use. I also don't really care that much about the half-second it takes to move my hand. I don't touch-type or type nonstop. So practically that means nothing to me.

I did build a charybdis, and I daily it. Its been great typing wise. I don't have any wrist issues anymore.

The trackball I don't use for any precision actions. Its useful if I want to hit a tab, or move to the other monitor. But trying to hit small links for example is painful. (That being said I am using the stock bearings, which don't seem to work well)

It was a significant expense for a keyboard, especially being a kit. Albeit my wrists are worth it.

> If this works better for you than a Logitech or Kensington trackball

A few years back, I bought and tried various Logitech/Kensington-type trackballs between two halves of my split keyboard and none of them worked well enough due to being too large for comfortable reach (and also the casing being large enough to force the halves farther apart than I prefer). I even bought a smaller uncased trackball component to try to make something but never got around to it.

I saw a photo of this product a few days ago in some CES round-up and immediately thought "oh, someone finally made the thing I wanted" (narrow, small). Of course, because the exact height, position and angle of these kinds of things tend to matter ergonomically, it may not work for me but it's a lot closer than anything I've yet seen. If it's reasonably priced, I'll probably pick one up to try.

Too late to add this as an edit to my post, but: I should have specified I do a fair bit of CAD and image editing work in addition to coding, so I need a high quality pointing device.

If you just use the pointing device for switching windows and clicking links/icons, maybe it's a different story.

I'm not sure if a standalone trackpoint really makes sense, the main benefit of those is being accessible from the home row, which you lose if it's not integrated into the keyboard. If you're moving your hand anyway then you may as well use something more precise for pointing.

If you're willing to replace your keyboard, Lenovo does make a standalone version of their ThinkPad keyboard complete with trackpoint though.

Not exactly trackballs, but Magic Trackpad can be considered an alternative. Or roller mouse slim (crazy expensive)

While I do use one daily (when I'm laptop only), I would say that it seems to be made for fingers, not thumbs. It's hard to be accurate with thumbs.

For trackpoint fans Lenovo makes a classic Thinkpad keyboard as a standalone rechargeable wireless keyboard. It works with Bluetooth, it's own USB wireless dongle or even wired USB. Has a switch for Windows or Android/Linux key mapping. I have one and like it (although it's pricey at around $100).

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/keyb...

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Thinkpad-Trackpoint-Keyboard-4....

This [0] is pretty close. IBM made a version of the Model M with Trackpoint but those are rare. Lenovo also sells [1] a keyboard that's basically a Thinkpad keyboard with trackpoint in a separate chassis.

[0] https://tex.com.tw/products/shinobi [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CS1FVF2

Some great options have been mentioned already.

Another interesting option is the HHKB Studio keyboard. https://hhkeyboard.us/hhkb-studio/product

HolyKeebs also has TrackPoint modules available for some exotic ergo split keyboards: https://holykeebs.com/

A very exotic option is the Svalboard, which is available with both trackball and trackpoint configurations: https://svalboard.com/

Unicomp, which inherited the IBM Model M tooling, still makes a keyboard with a trackpoint: https://www.pckeyboard.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Cate...

Reminds me, I need to fix my T480's screen. I have the part but I'm lazy.

But where?

Mnt reform and the mini both feature optional track balls. Might be more of a niche but still, you can buy a new laptop with a trackball.

You think you do. The issue is it's just about impossible to isolate translation from rotation. You would always be doing just a little rotating every time you touched the ball, whether you wanted to or not. And any time you tried 'rotating', you'd also be moving the cursor.

6DOF devices have been done (ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceOrb_360 or https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/12416/Logitech-Cyber...). They're sorta fun to use (at first) in CAD for browsing 3D models, but never caught on as once you get good at the CAD UIs, the extra degrees of freedom get in the way more than they help.

yeah, it drives me a little crazy that the only trackball that supports rotation is the Kensington Slimblade. I'd love to try a ploopy or something else out there, because i don't otherwise particularly like the slimblade (especially the software and the industrial design - ugly!) but i can't give up rotational scrolling. it's so much better than scroll wheels or scroll-mode buttons once you get the hang of it.

My family had one of the Microsoft EasyBall's growing up - that thing was absolutely huge.

https://imgur.com/a/Bu6aiUU

The only use we got out of it was as a MAME controller for Marble Madness.

I'd hope that if they're releasing the 3D files, then swapping the baseplate out for something custom or aftermarket won't be too hard. I assume there are fasteners under the rubber feet.