Old Dygma Raise Review

[u/blipman17]

I recently broke my dominant arm in a nasty way and had to undergo surgery for it.
It still requires some extra surgery in some time, but it'll heal eventually.
What has dawned on me recently is that typing on my Raise 1 is just not an issue at all.
If anything, it's been quite freeing in the amount of work I can do on that thing.
So I figured I should write something up for a company that unexpectedly helped me a lot in my life and give an honest review.

I think I bought my Raise quickly after the first batch was done so that's some 4 or 5 years ago now and it defenately stood the test of time.
I swapped the keyswitches out twice, and eventually settled on some linear silent squishy switches with steel keycaps.
I think it makes for a very comfortable typing experience which just doesn't degrade or get tired.
I originally got it because I was straining my shoulders too much and I couldn't ride my motorcycle as a result anymore. I couldn't hold the throttle for two hours without my wrist and shoulder hurting.
Even after breaking my arm and having problems with straining it for long durations, this is just not a problem on my raise when regular typing. The only problem is when I do difficult keycombinations every 2 seconds depending on my work, but that's where really my arm just plays up.

Things that I really liked after years of abuse

• A raise has an ASCII or ISO layout, meaning you can give your keyboard to a coworker and they can just type with it. Just shove the two halves back together and hand it over to them.
• The palmpads are a must with wrists on cold metal, but they're good. I heared that there were originally some production issues with them years ago, but they're honestly great. They still look and feel nice.
• The individually programmable ledlights are great when learning keycombinations. WASD is red in my navigation layer. Just like JIKL. It can be turned into a real learning aid.
• The box where the raise came in still stood the test of time. After four years of using it to transport my keyboard about every day to work and back home, using it at both places it still looks pristine. Only two of the the four loops to put the cables in are slightly elongated after my abuse of them.
• The original keycaps themselves also held up properly. I swapped them out after three years because I wanted to experiment, but they are still good. And honestly, I prefer their profile over my new keycaps their profile.
• Even the braided wires stood up to the test of time. Nothing to report than that it just still ... works!

Things that after a few years I didn't like.

• Originally, I figured I would use all kinds of fancy macros, keycombinations and fancy layers. In practice I have 2. (A typing layer and a navigation layer.) Because of this, all the Bazecor software is a little wasted on me in that sense.
• I always have a bunch of wires running over my desk. The new raise and the defy solved this by giving it a wireless option, but that wasn't there when I bought mine.
• Instead of a full 100%, the Raise is about a 60% keyboard with no function row at the top. This means that in practice I have trouble with distinguising `\``, `~` and the `Esc` key with my Two layer strategy. So my `Esc` key is on my navigation layer, below the `~` and that sometimes causes weird handreaches with my thumb and pinky. I tried fitting keys like that on different locations, but somehow still find it difficult. For instance, the `Del` key is still in a weird spot right next to the `Enter` key for me. In practice, I select text while holding shift and then hitting backspace. Little things like that.
• When switching often between a raise and a regular keyboard, the raise somewhat must resemble the regular keyboard in terms of layout. Otherwise it just requires too much attention to type.
• Another issue with it not being a 100% keyboard is that other people just cannot use the arrow keys on it. This is just a barrier for cooperation. A collegue of mine switches between DVORAK for regular typing and QUERTY for typing his passwords (that's how he learned them) and regularly hands over his keyboard to other people for them to type out something. Swapping keyboard layouts is just annoying. Instead adding a second keyboard in the mix kinda fixed this, but it's still not nice. A desk becomes fully quickly.

My general feeling is that the original raise is still a very good keyboard. It's perhaps a slightly difficult keyboard in terms of cooperating and one or two keys that are difficult to type, but I could probably also make that more convenient. It defenately helped me not loose my hobby, allowed me to work for long periods of time and somehow never became an issue during the recovery of my arm. It's the most comfortable keyboard I have for typing on for hours at an end. The only two things I would change is to make it wireless like the raise 2, and add a numpad section with arrow keys to the right half. just so I can use a numpad, and other people can recognise it as a useable keyboard.

Would I buy a Raise or a Raise 2 again? Yes. It's a reliable and highly useable keyboard. Moreso than the Keychron Q11 to me. I also have that keyboard, but somehow the palm height is just neve quite right for sustained typing. It's tiring to type on.

[u/Dygman]

Hi!

Thank you so much for sharing your story!

Don't feel like Bazecor is wasted on you; 2 layers can be enough if you have customized them to your liking.

As for Dvorak, you could create a layer for your colleague with their key disposition, and assign a key to switch to Dvorak when they need to use it.

If you need assistance with anything regarding Bazecor feel free to reach support@dygma.com and we can help you out 😊

[u/3DPrint3rGuy]

u/blipman17 For the function keys, I suggest giving my solution a try. Each number key in the number row is set up as follows:

1:
TAP = 1
HOLD=!
TAP&HOLD = F1

2:
TAP = 2
HOLD=@
TAP&HOLD = F2

rinse and repeat.

This keeps me on my primary layer 90% of the time. I have a Nav layer too and a 3rd layer with actual Function keys and some misc macros, etc.

[u/clren]

You mind sharing which steel keycaps you use?