Okay, so let’s talk about this 75% keyboard thing. I got curious about it the other day. I was looking to downsize from my big ol’ full-size keyboard, you know, the one with the number pad and everything. I wanted something smaller but not too small, something that still had the arrow keys and some of those function keys I use a lot.
I started digging around, reading articles and watching videos. It turns out that a 75% keyboard is kinda like the sweet spot for a lot of people. It’s smaller than a full-size, but bigger than those tiny 60% keyboards that are missing a bunch of keys I actually use.
So, how many keys are we talking about? Well, from what I gathered, most 75% keyboards have somewhere around 84 keys. Yeah, I counted them myself on a few different models I found online just to be sure. It’s not an exact number, sometimes it is 83 or up to 87, but generally, it’s in that ballpark.
Here’s the breakdown of what I found:
- You’ve got your regular alphabet keys, obviously.
- You still get those function keys along the top (F1, F2, etc.), which is super handy.
- Arrow keys are there, thank goodness. I can’t live without those.
- And you’ve got some of those extra keys like Delete, Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down.
Now, they do some clever stuff to squish all those keys into a smaller space. I found that they usually just kinda removed the number pad and then just move some of those extra keys around a bit. The main thing is you still get most of the important keys without taking up a ton of desk space.
So why did I land on a 75%?
Well, I tried using one of those super small 60% keyboards for a while. It was okay, but I kept getting annoyed at not having dedicated arrow keys and function keys. I also tried a friend’s tenkeyless keyboard and that was good but just a little too big. So the 75% layout was the one that got me. It’s compact, but I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing a bunch of keys I need. I played around with one that has 84 keys and that felt good and now it is on my desk.
Anyway, that’s my little journey into the world of 75% keyboards. If you’re thinking about getting a smaller keyboard, it’s definitely something to check out.