The v1 layout, all in black, in a lower, screwless case, with three more USB-C ports on the back. Leave an address and you'll hear when pre-orders open.
What changes
v1's board, with a hub built in
Four USB-C ports
One goes to your computer. The other three are a USB 2.0 hub inside the board, so the mouse receiver and the flash drive plug into the keyboard instead of the laptop.
The same layout
Sixty-eight keys on the same Matrix-Dvorak grid as v1. Nothing you learn on one is wasted on the other. Where a key has an Fn-layer legend, it sits below its main one.
Lower, and no screws
One piece of black nylon, 8.65 mm tall against v1's 9.45, that snaps around the board, switches and black plate.
Still yours to change
Kailh Choc hot-swap sockets, per-key RGB that lights each legend through the black caps, and QMK on v1's STM32 controller, so a v1 keymap carries straight over.
v2 is wired: the battery-and-Bluetooth design is not for sale, and this is the board that ships. None of the v2 pictures or videos are photographs. The 3D model at the top and the plain renders come straight from its CAD; the desk, studio and night scenes, the clip above included, set that CAD model in AI-generated surroundings.
Peace of mind · speed of thought
Why make the change?
The keyboard you learned on was designed around a typewriter. Two of its habits survive on every laptop, and neither has a reason to any more.
Watch, 48 seconds
The whole argument, drawn in KeBe's own keys.
Or read on: the words below have the history, the rest of the layout and the reason behind every move.
The stagger
Rows knocked sideways
On a typewriter every key sat on a lever that ran straight back under the keys behind it, so each row was shifted sideways to let the levers pass. A keyboard has no levers, yet the offset stayed. Half a key between the number row and the row with Q on it, a quarter of a key more to the home row, and half a key again to the bottom row: every finger still reaches off at an angle for the keys above and below its home. KeBe's keys sit in straight columns on an 18 by 17 mm grid, so each finger moves straight up and down its own.
The letter order
Letters kept apart
Every typebar struck the same spot on the page. Hit two keys too close together and their bars could meet on the way up and jam, so QWERTY was laid out to keep common letter pairs apart: an order for the machine, not for your fingers. August Dvorak started from the hands instead, in the 1930s: the vowels under the left hand's resting fingers, the most-used consonants under the right's, and the rarest letters down on the bottom row. KeBe's letters are his.
Nothing on a digital keyboard can jam. Keeping either habit only costs your hands.
01
The home row does the work
The row your fingers rest on reads A O E U I under the left hand and D H T N S under the right. Add up how often each letter turns up in English and about 71% of the letters you type land on that row. On QWERTY's A S D F G H J K L it is about 34%, so two letters in three are a reach.
02
Symbols in the middle
The - = [ ] / \ keys a standard board leaves to your right pinky sit in the two middle columns, where your pointer fingers take them: far stronger fingers than your pinkies. They also set your hands further apart. KeBe's pointer-finger home keys are 9 cm apart, against 5.7 cm on a standard keyboard, so your wrists bend less.
03
Hands take turns
Words tend to go consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel. With the vowels on one side and the consonants on the other, a word like HOME or TOMATO passes from hand to hand with every letter: one hand reaches while the other strikes, for a steadier rhythm and less work for any single finger.
04
Both thumbs, both sides
Two space bars sit under the thumbs, and Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Fn and the Super key are mirrored on each side, so a shortcut takes one key from each hand instead of a stretch with one.
05
Sixty-eight keys, nothing missing
Hold Fn and the left hand's home keys become arrows, the right hand's a number pad, and the number row F1 to F10. Media controls sit in the middle columns. Nothing is more than a finger's reach from home.
06
Typos fixed in the keyboard
The firmware carries a dictionary of common misspellings and corrects a word the moment you finish it, by itself, on any computer you plug into: accomodate becomes accommodate before you look up. There is nothing to install. If it was right the first time, Backspace straight after puts your word back and it is left alone from then on, and Fn + A switches the whole thing off.
Nothing sits where a standard keyboard puts it, so you learn KeBe as a new instrument instead of unpicking old habits one key at a time. Switching takes practice, and the first weeks are slower. Once it is in your hands you stop thinking about the keyboard at all: that is the mindless mastery in the name.
KeBe v1
The board that started it. Sixty-eight keys, wired, hand-built in small batches — and sold out.