

Mechanical keyboards don’t have to be brightly coloured monstrosities designed to appeal to those who’ve had too many energy drinks. Mac compatible: Separate version available.Mechanical keyboards don’t have to sound like a herd of wild horses going over a bridge, although they certainly can if that’s what you want. Gamers, of course, are well used to the idea that the right mechanical or even electro-optical switches under their keycaps can make them into some sort of gaming deity, having seen the remarkable feats of keyboard mastery from Korean StarCraft players, but even more pedestrian games can benefit from the extra precision of knowing exactly where on its downward travel a key will activate.

Not only can the right keyboard make working from home a more pleasurable experience, it can increase your typing speed too. You can be sat using one of them all day, so along with the rest of your home office setup, you need to make sure it suits you. That’s the thing about keyboards: they’re intensely personal. Other sizes are available, however, and if the most common ones don’t appeal you can trawl Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites until you find something being custom made that looks like a perfect fit. There are also a variety of sizes, with full-size (the traditional keyboard with a numeric keypad), tenkeyless (which loses the numeric keypad) and 60 per cent (which drops the key count down much lower) being the most common.
