Review: MoErgo Go60, a split ergonomic and fully programmable keyboard

I’m going to call this from the start. The Go60 is the best travel-friendly split keyboard, perhaps even the best all-around split keyboard, you can buy right now.

I’m no MoErgo fanboy – in my review of their Glove80 I was pretty clear that there were areas I felt the Glove80 fell short. I feel the Go60 is in a different league. Not just in terms of presentation, which is pretty faultless here, but in terms of execution and capability.

Some headlines… the Go60 is a 60-key, split, fully programmable, ergonomic keyboard that can be used fully wired, or fully wireless, or half wired. It’s got hotswap switch sockets, mounting options, has two built-in trackpads, and yet the keys still sit just a 1mm higher than a ZSA Voyager, a keyboard as close to the desk as any factory built ergo board I’ve tried, and that’s only because the rubber feet on the bottom of the Go60 are a little taller.

The editor which lets you program the layout is seriously powerful, allowing you to do anything that the underlying ZMK firmware can offer. It’s a seriously accomplished bit of kit.

That’s the birds eye of view of the Go60 so if you don’t need the detail and just want to know if there are any reasons not to buy this, no, there aren’t. The Go60 is terrific, go and order one.

If you are still here, lets be honest, you’re a nerd and you need all the nerdy details. If you want to know more but don’t consider yourself a nerd, I’ve got bad news for you, you’re a nerd too.

But nevermind, you want details and boy have I got them. I’ve been using this keyboard everyday for the last 6 weeks and there is lots I want to tell you.

Packaging

The Go60 comes in premium packaging. It feels like you have bought something meaningful, much more so than MoErgo’s prior board, the Glove80.

The inside of the box has QR codes for the manual and MoErgo’s Discord channel. Alongside the board, in the moulded cardboard inner, is a keycap and switch puller, spare feet for the tenting, and two little, what looks like tablet boxes, which have quite a few spare keycaps. There are some blank, some blank with homing dots, some legended for different OS’s, and a few spare switches too. There is also the spare 1.5U keycaps for the innermost thumb keys, which I prefer to the single height ones that are on when you get it.

In the box there is also a TRRS cable, extra tenting feet and mounting screws, plus two USB cables, one A to C, the other C to C.

The board itself is in a funky yellow plastic surround, which in turn sits inside a felt bag with a drawstring. Each side goes in the surround with the boards underside facing out. And then you secure it with the velcro band. The hard plastic is like a protective shell and because there is no wasted space, the Go60 only takes up the space it absolutely has to when travelling. That’s a system I’ve not seen before and it works really well in practice.

Design and build quality

The Go60 itself feels extremely solid. I imagine it has taken some inspiration from ZSA’s Voyager, as there are some design choices that I’ve only seen there before. For example, there are channels under the keycaps around the switches to make removing them simpler without mashing up the plastic. The metal underside really adds to the feeling of sturdiness and purposefulness, just like it does on the Voyager. It also has orientation holes for the optional mounting puck. More on that later.

Where MoErgo’s other board, the Glove80 wouldn’t be something I would reach for to bludgeon an intruder with, I think you could do some damage with a Go60. There is no flex or creaking, and while it has a bulbous bit on each side to house batteries, electronics on the touchpads, it never gets in the way. I’m not saying it is the prettiest board in the world but you’re not dating it are you? And I wouldn’t give up any of the functionality just to tweak the form factor. I think all the right design decisions have been made with the Go60. It’s low on the desk, it’s very sturdy, and it feels like every spare bit of space inside is filled with essentials. It just feels like a quality piece of electronics; there is a very pleasing solidity to it.

Around the back you have got physical on/off buttons, a USB port for charging, a reset pin hole and a TRRS port if you want to connect the two halves with a wire.

Keys and Layout

This layout is probably pretty close to what I would choose if I was designing a board myself. 60 keys. Not so many that space on the desk is wasted, but enough that I can enjoy a dedicated arrow cluster. And for me, that’s an important bonus on a smaller board.

I’ve got used to implementing arrow keys behind a layer on boards like the Corne and Voyager by holding in the key below my left index finger to switch to a navigation layer but occasionally, it is still really useful to have dedicated arrows. Jumping between words and lines using Unix shortcuts throughout macOS is just that much easier with dedicated arrow keys. Not to mention design programs where you use the arrow keys to nudge elements around.

The Go60 has got quite an aggressive pinky finger stagger. As I rest my hand on the keys, my pinky is almost perfectly lined up with the shape of the key layout.

The keys are a custom spacing, not MX keycap size spacing, and not choc size spacing either, which you can tell with the slightly non-uniform gaps between the columns and rows of the keys. I understand those spaces are the result of a lot of tweaking to optimise ergonomics. Personally, I’m not convinced 1mm of difference either way would make a difference to me, and I’d perhaps have gone for aesthetics here but I can’t deny how comfy I find the Go60, so I’m inclined to believe they probably know best.

The Go60 uses v1 choc switches, although choc v2 switches also fit, and ships as standard with Plum or Cherry Blossom choc v1 switches. The Plum and Cherry are both silent Choc switches, and I’m using the Plum Blossoms, which are just a little heavier than the Cherry Blossom option, but feel as good as chocs can feel. Unlike the Glove80, they are hot-swappable keys in the Go60 so you can swap them out if you like. That’s great news because if you don’t care a jot about your team mates sanity, you can pop some clicky whites in there, or whatever else is your preference.

Don’t misunderstand me, I think the Blossoms sound and feel good in the Go60. But if I never had to go to the office, I’d likely go white clicky. I also might swap the POM keycaps at some point. POM is the right material choice for the Go60 as they let glow from the RGB through well, but I personally prefer the feel of PBT, so I may be changing these caps over for the PBT MCC caps I have on the Glove80 (sorry Glove!), or ordering some of their newer windowed ones, or perhaps opting for some LDSA caps which don’t let the light through, but feel great to me.

Connection

It might sound like I’m exaggerating, but connection in any of the modes has been perfect.

Bluetooth is absolutely seamless and freakishly quick. A lot of Bluetooth devices I have take a moment or two to connect but when I switch from work laptop to home computer with the Go60, it’s almost instant.

MoErgo has the concept of a ‘magic’ key, and by default this toggles to a layer with all the system related tasks like toggling RGB, switching Bluetooth devices, or putting the Go60 into bootloader mode to upload new firmware.

I moved my magic key to the outermost bottom row on the left half, and my devices go 1 to 4 from the inner most, so to switch devices, I just hold the magic and tap one of those keys. By the the time I start typing again, I’m already on the machine I have switched to. I’ve done this so many times now, I know it isn’t just luck. It’s just very well done, and absolutely solid.

Wired modes

There is a standard feature of the ZMK firmware that allows the left side of a split board to connect with a wire from the left side to the computer, and then the right side talks to the left wirelessly. There is no special config needed to do this, which makes it a great connection option when you first get the Go60 and just want to try it out.

But the Go60 has another trick up its sleeve I have not encountered on a ZMK powered board before, and that’s a fully wired mode, with no wireless at all, where the halves are connected by a TRRS cable. When you connect the two halves with the TRRS cable it automatically switches to this connection type, which is very impressive. This is perfect if you need to use the board in a more secure environment where the use of Bluetooth or other wireless modes is prohibited. It’s also electronically protected so you can hot-plug the TRRS cable in and out and nothing gets fried. That’s a surprisingly rare feature on even ‘wired only’ boards.

Again, wired mode is flawless. It just works. I understand you can even load a special version of the firmware that disables the wireless entirely, so if you are in a super locked down environment that doesn’t allow Bluetooth, you can still enjoy the Go60.

To conclude, any way you want to connect the Go60, you can. And they all work flawlessly.

My config

I’m not sure how useful this is, but I’ll quickly tell you how I have mine set up in the MoErgo editor, in terms of key layout and layers.

I have a base layer, which is Colemak DHm, I have home row mods on both sides, where holding in a finger on the home row gives me ctrl, option, cmd, shift and hyper, and a few auto-shift keys so if I hold them a little longer I get the shifted version of the key.

I’m a web dev by trade so the most important key is to the right of my main thumb key and that does copy with one tap, and paste with two. I screen grab a lot too so, two keys dedicated to that on the left of the left thumb keys.

Then I have a layer for numbers and function keys, which rarely gets used, a nav layer for the aforementioned arrow keys on a layer, and my most used programming symbols, and the default Magic layer which has all the bluetooth connection, RGB lighting stuff.

I believe there is also something to port a layout form Glove80 over but I’ve not tried that so can’t tell you how effective that is.

Trackpads

You might be saddened to know the two circular bits on each half of the Go60 aren’t scratching decks. Or small hot plates for making tiny crepes or the worlds smallest oatcakes (shout out to the 1 person reading this in Stoke on Trent). No. They are in fact actually both 40mm trackpads.

I’m going to caveat this section a little. I’m getting on a bit now, so I never really grew to love trackpads on laptops. I know plenty of people swear by the Apple trackpads but my pointing device of preference is a Logitech MX Master.

So, I’m probably not the best placed here to give you a thorough appraisal of these trackpads, beyond telling you how I’ve been using them and how I have found them. For me, I use them mostly as a handy backup. If I’m out and don’t want to take a mouse – for coding, writing and general office work they are great. You can even click and drag to select which works surprisingly well, and I even find them pretty handy in apps like Sketch/Figma to move around the canvas; they are probably better than the mouse for that. They don’t do multi-touch, like you might do on a magic trackpad but I didn’t really expect them too; there really isn’t the room, even if they supported it.

For detailed design work, or precise selections, or just because I have so much muscle memory, I’m still reaching for my MX Master. That isn’t a criticism of the trackpads of the Go60, it’s a reflection of their intended use case. This is designed to challenge for the title of the ultimate travel board, and the additions of the integrated trackpads here all but cement that victory.

I have left the trackpads set up pretty much as they come out of the box, the right one is like a normal mouse/trackpad, move your finger and you move the cursor. The left one is up and down for panning a canvas, or most practically, scrolling documents. You can also have the Go60 autoswitch layers when you use the trackpad, and so have more movement specific keys on that layer, or have a key that you hold to adjust the sensitivity.
There is also little nubbins above and below each trackpad, and that indicates the north and south of the trackpads because as you use it the finger follows that path, not a direct up and down.

I don’t have any complaints at all about their inclusion, I think it’s a really interesting addition to a factory-made board, especially with one on each side for different use cases.

Comfort

I’ve tried all manner of keywell boards now and I can tell you I find lower, flatter boards like the Go60, Voyager, or Corne just suit me better than keyboards with keywells.
I don’t suffer any kind of thumb fatigue with flat boards where I do with keywell boards. So, much as I enjoy using boards like the Glove80 and Advantage360, I just can’t use them for long periods.

I’m likely in the minority here but if you are a fan of flat boards, you’ll have no problem getting on with the Go60. If something like the Kinesis Advantage or Glove80 is the only kind of board that’s brought you relief from pain, know that the Go60 is not like those boards and unlikely to measure up in comfort terms. Otherwise, I think the Go60 is exceptionally comfortable. I’ve been using this at least 8 hours a day for over 6 weeks at this point and I have had zero comfort issues. It’s simply my favourite board currently.

While there is no keywell, what the Go60 does have you covered for is tenting.

Tenting

You can tent the Go60 with the included add-on feet. You can snap these on the underside to alter the height to your preference. It’s not as fine-grained as the system on the Glove80 but it’s a hundred times easier. Just clip them on and away you go.

I don’t personally do the whole tenting thing, I just don’t find it beneficial to my comfort but this is a very good system. Simple and solid. No complaints here. If you do need to take the legs when you travel they will fit in the bag with the Go060 no problem.

One thing that does improve my comfort greatly is palm rests. And the Go60 has a brilliant accessory to help here.

Palm rest pads

One of my favourite things about the Go60 is actually one of the accessories; and that’s the Luxurious walnut palm rests. They are an extra $120 but as crazy as it may sound to spend $120 on palm rests, I think they are absolutely worth the outlay. There is a hard plastic frame and these walnut palm rests on the bottom. On the underside you can still tent using the same ickle legs design. And, like the bottom of the Go60, the underside of the palm rests also let you connect accessories for mounting each side, in case you want to go full on Xavier and mount the Go60 palm rests to a chair or something.

And these palm rests are just so nice to use the Go60 with. I love the walnut from an aesthetic, and tactile point of view. Even though the Go60 sits very close to the desk anyway, using it with the palm rests effectively puts the keys and touchpads directly under your finger tips. It’s just incredibly nice to use.

From a day to day, practicality point of view, I tend to take the Go60 on the road without the palm rests, and leave them waiting for me on my desk for when I return. Magnets mean you can just put the Go60 in position and they snap in. They don’t move in the slightest when you type or use the trackpads on the Go60.

So I’d say the palm rests are like a comfy pair of slippers. You get back home and pop the Go60 in place and everything is just a little bit nicer and more relaxed.

Mounting puck

Whether you are using the Go60 on its own, or with the walnut palm rests, you can add the $39 mounting pucks to let you mount the Go60 to any 1/4" tripod style mount. With the Voyager, ZSA popularised the approach of using magnets to mount the board to attachments. The Go60 does the same thing – the mounting pucks snap on to the bottom magnetically, with a groove to help you orientate it. And then when it comes to mounting, sky’s the limit. It could be your chair, desk or whatever else you can come up with.
I haven’t done any real custom mounting yet, as I could never reconcile what I would do about a mouse. But as the pointing device comes along for the ride with the Go60, it is something I am now considering.

Pricing

Custom split boards are never cheap but I think the Go60 is fairly priced in the market.

As I record this, the board itself is $299, with $25 shipping, the palm rest is $120, and the mounting pucks are $40.
I think there may be a bundle of the Go60 and the palm rests for $399. As I’ve already mentioned I think the palm rests are great. I know an extra $100 for some palm rests seems a bit mental but I absolutely love them, and I think you will too.

Conclusion

I don’t need to spend long here. This is the most fully-featured travel-friendly ergonomic split board you can buy.

When I first saw the product shot for the Go60 I was a bit ‘meh’ – another column layout split keyboard, with some probably useless trackpads I’ll never use but how wrong I was. Its overwhelming practicality has completely won me over. I’m really scratching around for anything negative to say.

It’s got great support both from MoErgo and their Discord community, the underlying ZMK firmware is the best available for wireless keyboards. It’s got built-in pointing devices, every connection option you can think off, it’s built incredibly well, has lovely accessories and mounting options galore. I could go on. But here is the bottom line.

This is the keyboard I am choosing to use everyday as my daily driver now, and I can’t give you any better recommendation than that.