I can visualize it, I just don’t have the necessary skills to bring it to life. Oh, and ideally it would have hot-swappable switches, LED lighting, and be quiet so if I put in silent switches the board wouldn’t interrupt my podcast listening. You know, simple things like all of the above at a reasonable price.

The Iris looks good, as does the Lily58, but my ideal board for work would be a split with a trackball on the right and a scroll wheel on the left, preferably with a bit of a dactyl style tilt for better ergos. I’m pretty new to mechanical keyboards in general, so if a roller or rotary encoder is what I really need to get those, I humbly apologize for using the wrong terms.

The “math mode” Is cool, but the Max sounds better for a mix of let’ letters and numbers. I saw a one-piece board on here with a central trackball that looked almost perfect but I really like the idea of a split because I’ve got wide shoulders so the angle of most ergo boards is still not enough to make them perfectly comfortable for me. A split with a trackball on one side and a scroll wheel on the other? That could be perfection.

It’s extra key presses hundreds or thousands of times a day ( I work with numbers). I also need a 10 key, but a separate 10 key is fine. I’ve been eyeing one of the ergonomic keyboards with the trackball because the central trackball would cut my hand movement by 50% (estimated).

Exactly this. I need a number row for work or gaming which limits the split and ergo keyboard options significantly.