Looking for a Minimalist, Compact Mechanical Keyboard? Check Out keezyboost40

At this point, the DIY keyboard community is so popular that there is a design to fit just about every possible need. If you go towards the niche side, you find ortholinear layouts, blank key switches, and super low key counts. Combine all of those and you get Christian Lo’s keezyboost40.

Keezyboost40 is about as minimalist as a keyboard can get without utilizing stenotype machine-style chorded keysets. It has only 40 keys, which means it has to rely heavily on layers to represent all of the common characters. But that keeps the size down. To further reduce the size, Lo chose to give keezyboost40 an ortholinear layout. That puts all of the keys in a nice orderly grid that takes up as little space as possible. To make the keyboard as thin as possible (just 16.5mm), it uses Kailh Cho low-profile key switches and low profile key caps. For extra 1337 cred (and to avoid mismatching layers/legends), all of those key caps are blank and unlabeled.

The only superfluous component on the entire keyboard is a portrait-oriented 1.8” LCD screen mounted between the two halves of the keyboard. That can display animations, config information (like current layer), or even games. A full set of SMD (surface mount device) diodes prevent ghosting and an appropriately minimalistic 3D-printed case frames the keezyboost40 PCB. To control the LCD and send key presses to a connected computer, Lo used a Raspberry Pi Pico development board. It runs firmware programmed in Rust (a language we don’t often see) that is based on Keyberon.

This kind of keyboard certainly isn’t for everyone and you’d have to retrain your typing muscle memory if you’re not used to ortholinear layouts. But for the right person, keezyboost40 is the perfect compact mechanical keyboard.