I like building and collecting silly keyboards and this one is fun to use. I thought using the trackball was gonna be a pain at first but no I picked it up pretty quickly. Borrowing my friend's trackball mouse my mind would want to push the absolute unit around the table instead of pushing the ball but I believe since this trackball is attached to a keyboard my mind recognizes it for thumb use only.

I'm really cheap so most of my other keebs have some level of jank and in turn personality. I really tried (didn't try?) and it came out way nicer than expected. Mismatched MCUs, 3 different kinds of switches, and keycaps from an old typewriter.

Typing experience has taken me a bit to get used to. I'm used to 36 keys and much more aggressive pinky columns so I keep accidentally pressing the extra columns and I have repeating buttons because I don't know what to do with them.

I used remap to flash my keyboard and it worked great for me. My only minor issue was the spacers for the choc thumb cluster that was too short. Or maybe the others were too long? I printed some better fitting ones and it works fine now. I might get actual ones when I'm not lazy...

So far so good. Everything works perfectly after a few weeks of owning this keeb. Really enjoy the low profile and the feel of it. Need to personalize some things and likely need to mess with qmk a little to better handle a mac. Do be aware the shipping is rough. That isn't a reflection on holykeebs, but just on the postal systems and customs.

I'm relatively new to split keyboards, but in the few months since starting my journey, I have already developed some preferences and pet peeves that I was really hoping to find an easy solution for. Keyball44 fills that role pretty well.

The first is a need for a pointing device. I had been a Thinkpad user and was always partial to the track point, but most split keyboards with trackpoints mount them off to the side of the keys instead of embed them in between keys. Granted that would require custom keycaps and clever modifications to the PCB, so I understand why this hasn't become a popular solution. Otherwise my main pointing device has been a trackball mouse, so transition to the Keyball44 was seamless. The placement of the trackball is also quite appropriate. The MX switches increase the height a little bit, which provides the right amount of clearance between the trackball and the palm.

The second is a need for a 3-key, spread out thumb cluster. Plenty of keyboards satisfy this requirement, but my first split keyboard is a ZSA Voyager, which has only 2 keys per side, so the need for a slightly larger but well-placed thumb cluster is sorely felt. The 3/2 arrangement on the Keyball44 turns out to be perfect.

The rest of the features of the Keyball44 more or less just turned out perfect for my needs. For example I preferred a 6-column layout since I need some extra keys for international layouts, and I have been getting used to a 3-row layout in order to reduce hand movement.

Finally I took advantage of Idan's soldering service, which was very helpful, because my own soldering skills leave much to be desired, and I also wanted per-key LEDs and hot-swap sockets.

All in all, this was a great purchase. The only hiccup in the experience came after the keyboard was put together, because flashing the firmware was a bit of a hassle. The initial keymap seems to be a Japanese layout, so the lower-right key doesn't send a character when using other locales. This confused me into thinking that the hotswap socket was detached and led to some extra fiddling. Nevertheless all was well in the end.

I've used quite a few split keyboards already, from the ergodox ez to the dygma defy but I've always wanted a split keyboard that has a mouse solution.

The Keyball44 is the first keyboard I've tried that answers this problem.

I ordered my Keyball44 fully assembled, I have little to no experience soldering something successfully so I am unable to provide any insight here. All I can say is that the keyboard seems sturdy.

The Good: This keyboard is great, the trackball is very useful. Aside from preventing the need for me to reach for my mouse, the trackball allows me to scroll both vertically and horizontally when in layer 3. This is extremely useful and I feel this can't be understated. Being able to scroll vertically and horizontally while keeping my hands on the keyboard adds a level of convenience that I almost can't live without.

I thought customizing this keyboard was going to be somewhat bothersome, as you will have to clone a forked branch repository off of QMK that is custom developed to handle the Sea Picro controller that HolyKeeb uses, however I found that I was still able to flash my keyboard by just using the web app remap-keys. The web app has some limitations such as a max of 3 layers but I found I was able map all the keys I needed.

Both halves of the keyboard can be flashed to have separate layouts depending on which side you plug the usb c cable into.

The Bad: The 40% layout is kind of limiting, I do wish there was a version with more keys, specifically for numbers. I've gotten used to the current layout somewhat however I would say that it's best suited for productivity. Gaming on this keyboard will be too difficult especially if you rely on number keys.

Switching to the keyball44 was difficult for me even having used several split programmable keyboards before. I had to rearrange my space, backspace, enter and tab keys as I now have less thumb keys than I did previously.

Currently, it doesn't look like a lot of people use this layout yet outside of japanese customers who have purchased this keyboard from Shirogane Labs. The few videos I've found on youtube are all in Japanese. If you do purchase this you should understand that you are sort of a pioneer in this space until there is more consumer adoption for a keyboard like this.

There is a discord community specifically for HolyKeebs however, so feel free to pop in if you have a question before or after purchasing your keyboard.

Conclusion: If you are okay with some tinkering and have always wanted a convenient keyboard trackball solution then I think you will enjoy this keyboard. You will have to provide your own keycaps and trackball but if you're someone who's already gone down the split keyboard rabbit hole like me then that shouldn't be too much of an issue. I definitely think keyboards like this are closer to the end game solution. I will definitely be buying another keyboard from HolyKeebs so I don't have to carry this one to and from the office!

Great product arrived on time no issues

אחלה איכות, מרוצה מאוד, כיף לראות חנות כזו שעובדת מישראל. ביחד ננצח!

Amazing for the price

good support, helping community, nice product

This was my first jump into split ergonomic keyboards, and I couldn't have selected a better kit! it's probably one of the best value kits on the market right now, since it comes pre-soldered and tested

The trackball works great, although it's not as precise with small movements. It's also not that ergonomic since you need to stretch your index finger beyond rested home row state. I haven't added any other features besides the default mouse movement, but I'd like to add scrolling as well.

Highly recommend this kit!

Having so few keys takes some getting used to, but I am really enjoying it so far. I also got Vial working to allow me to quickly set up tap dancing shortcuts, which have been a great boon to my gaming layer.

Finally having a touch stick with a split keyboard is also a huge plus. It greatly reduces how much I have to reach for my mouse for minor movements. I even added an extra physical mouse button to make it even more convenient.

Great seller.

TLDR: This is my first truly custom mechanical keyboard, It is great, high quality, awesome service and highly recommended.

I’ve only recently been getting interested in mechanical keyboards, and specifically low profile ones that would be more ergonomic than the thousands of standard key trays available out there. I ended up getting a keychron k11 pro as my first non-standard form factor keyboard and while I do certainly like it a lot, it still feels rather big for a minimalistic keyboard. Then I discovered the corne. I saw a few pictures of handmade keyboards that had fairly normal full size keys online and started looking for something low profile, After more than a decade of using pretty much exclusively Apple keyboards, I don’t want to get used to keys with a mile and a half of travel.

I found a few potential sources of kits and prebuilt keyboards and decided that I didn’t feel like this would be a great soldering project for someone like me, who hasn’t made a nice looking solder joint in about 30 years, I was going to need someone to have the patience to do that for me. That’s where Holykeebs comes in. At first I had some alternative Ideas about what I wanted in a keyboard but that turned out to be somewhat problematic. Not impossible, but something better left for a future project. Dan helped me through the process of deciding the right keyboard for me with honest information and some good tips and I ended up ordering a Corne choc with a trackball on the right.

Now it would be nice if that arrived quickly but unfortunately for all involved, it turned out the package was lost. I hadn’t been able to track much of the package at all but Idan apparently kept an eye on things and he notified me of the bad news before I had a chance to find out myself. We gave the postal services some time to figure out what was what and unfortunately, it does not appear that it was ever found. Idan did however send me a new keyboard, so he sat through the process of making all those solder joints twice! and that second package arrived fairly quickly and in great shape.

By now I don’t even remember for sure if I had to put the actual keys in their sockets or not, but I did put on the keycaps, of which I got a couple extra’s in the package! And the board looks amazing. It feels good too and is even fairly quiet. It really seems like a quality product with endless customisation options too. I haven’t really gotten around to customising it yet, except for breaking the white perfection with a single blue key. And I haven’t taken a minute to get into the software side of things at all yet. What I have noticed, is that after about a month of use, my typing speed on the keyboard has significantly improved from the meagre 4wpm I got initially, but I still have a long way to go to reach my “normal” 55ish words per minute. I also still make a lot more mistakes with this new keyboard and am still considering tenting options as well. All in all I think that with enough practice this little keyboard can certainly be better than normal keyboards in pretty much every way and I sure will keep practicing with it and when I finally get into the software side I'll open up a whole new world of possibilities again!

All I had to do was put the keycaps on where I wanted them, plug it in and bring up the Via web app and I was off and running setting up my key maps and layers. It is so nice to dive into the world of custom keyboards without having to reckon with my lack of soldering skills or patience lol.

Solid build quality. And the track point is amazing allowing pointing without leaving the keyboard. Just need to map a key as mouse click 1 in Via.

Wonderful experience overall. (Typed with said keyboard ;P)

I bought a trackball Ferris Sweep. Lovely build. Looks like it was made in a factory. Immense attention to detail and I LOVE the trackball. Also the seller was helpful throughout the process and responded quickly to any questions I had. Would highly recommend!

this keyboard feels very sturdy. yet still compact. VIA is very easy to use and QMK is not too hard to use if you have any programming experience, but necessary to adjust the trackball settings