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Tackling TKLs
I feel that you missed a few important items in your review of the MSI Vigor GK50 Low Profile TKL in the March 2022 issue. Now, I’m no expert, but I’m sure adherence to functional consistency and standardization are paramount to a keyboard’s success and usability.
I am versed enough to have experienced proper QWERTY keyboards (even TKLs), where the individual key’s functions are arranged vertically, so the normal function is the bottom character, and the shifted key function is the upper one. This allows for easy comprehension of functional operation.
Lately, I’ve seen many keyboards (including the TKL I’m typing on now) where the key characters are arranged horizontally and the functional operation is left to right (the left character is default and the right is the shifted one).
It’s no big deal if the entire keyboard chooses one or the other, as long as it is consistent throughout.
Logitech's Pro TKL Gaming Keyboard is a great all-rounder.
© LOGITECH
However, the MSI not only switches from the former to the latter for portions of the board but looking at the number keys, reverses the normal left to right shift standard, to a right with left shift function per key.
What a dog’s breakfast!
Secondly, there is the standardization aspect.
From the image in your review, the keys are laid out in some form of adulterated QWERTY, with the Tilda and pipe key combined, and the left shift cut down to make room for the backslash combo (normally found on the right side of the board).