I’m surprised by the love here for the number pad! I saw mainly benefits for getting a 60 or 65% when I was considering a keyboard kit:
- More space for moving my mouse to the left. I play FPS games with a pretty low sensitivity, and I used to flick my thumb into my keyboard.
- More portable. My keyboard can connect with Bluetooth or usb-c so it’s nice to be able to use with a tablet
- Less switches to lube and install when I assembled it
- No redundant keys, though I had to learn traditionally typing numbers. But now I don’t have to move my hand position to type them.
I do prefer vim for text editing, so I have less use for some of the special keys. But they’re still nice to have for shortcuts or keybinds.
My old keyboard was a cheap $30 membrane one, and it was a painted metal plate with a plastic shell on the back for the internals. The edge of it was rounded, but it was still just a single edge, maybe 5mm thick, so I used to give myself bruises trying to flick in FPS games. They were literally just a vertical line on my thumb.