jmtd → log → Tex Shura

So yeah, I bought the Shura.

It's been about a year since I got the Tex Shinobi keyboard. I ended up taking to the office and using it there. The MX Silent Red switches are a good fit for a shared space, and I have a bit more desk space so the extra large footprint is not a problem.

Back at home, I have a reasonably large desk, but I've got a Synth jammed at the back-centre, leaving a slightly tight budget for keyboard depth. The Shura is nice and compact and fits in perfectly.

So what should I say about it? Build quality is excellent. I went with MX Reds (non-silent this time) which feel a lot better to me than the silent variant. I do worry about waking the kids up if I type after they've gone to bed, but it hasn't actually been a problem (and the switches activate quite early in travel so you can "tip-toe" type silently, and slowly).

I like these keyboards (and I've otherwise avoided the Mech keyboard money pit) because they have the integrated trackpoint, which I rely on. Just as with the Shinobi, the Trackpoint is of an excellent quality, pretty much indistinguishable from that on the official Lenovo trackpoint keyboards.

Since the Shura is a a "60%" or "65%" or "70%" or something, thus forgoing the Function keys and such, I rely on "layers": switching the function of all the regular keys whilst "Fn" is pressed. You can reprogram the Tex keyboards using a profile output by their web-based configurator which I've used to mildly customize the layout: swapped left-hand "Win" with "Fn" (FN1), mapped FN1 to the right-hand "Win". That's it so far, the defaults are otherwise sufficient for me. I've also used the DIP switches to enable mouse wheel emulation with the trackpoint (in common with the Lenovos).

In September, Justin from TeX left an intriguing comment on my last blog post:

Thanks for your promotion !! We will try to design a new keyboard ( a little ergo keyboard ) should be release end of this year !!