The Wave: Logitech's ergonomic keyboard reviewed

by Christian Rudolph

Some years ago – rather more than I care to count – I fractured my right forearm. I am right-handed, and at the time this created a practical problem: homework was handwritten, and writing left-handed was not something I could do. The solution my parents arrived at was, by modern standards, somewhat improbable, but at the time perfectly normal: they bought me an Olympia typewriter. For a fourteen-year-old, having a typewriter in your room gave it a certain office-like appeal that felt, at the time, rather distinguished.

The cast came off after six weeks, the arm healed, and I could write again. But the typewriter stayed. A friend had passed on a booklet she had used to learn touch typing – pages of exercises built around words like "jaffa" and "sasha", designed to build finger memory across the keyboard. I was young enough not to fully register how tedious it was, and I worked through it. It turned out to be one of the best time investments of my life. I have touch-typed ever since.

The ergonomic keyboard problem

Touch typing, once you have it, changes what you want from a keyboard. The layout matters. The key travel matters. And the angle matters – a flat keyboard designed for two-fingered typists is not the same experience as one shaped around the way hands actually sit at rest. Ergonomic keyboards, with their angled keys and raised centres, made immediate sense to me in a way they apparently do not to everyone. Colleagues who used conventional typing habits found them baffling. That was, broadly speaking, their problem.

The difficulty has always been choice – or rather the lack of it. Ergonomic keyboards have never been as common as their more conventional counterparts, and the options available at any given time have been limited. For many years at work I used the Logitech K350, which served well enough. The typing experience was comfortable, the layout sensible. But full-sized ergonomic keyboards share a significant disadvantage: they are enormous. The K350 occupies desk space with the confidence of something that does not particularly care about your mouse. A beached whale is not an unfair description. And another problem is that, when working with a graphics tablet, the spread of the arms becomes quite wide, which can be tiring for arms, back and neck.

After several years of regular use, some of the K350's keys had worn blank. It seemed a reasonable moment to see what had changed.

Enter the Wave

The Logitech Wave Keys is, in essence, an attempt to bring ergonomic keyboard design into a more practical footprint. It retains the wave-shaped keyframe –keys rising gently toward the centre, angled to place hands and wrists in a more natural position – along with a cushioned palm rest with memory foam. But it does this in a compact layout that includes a full number pad while remaining significantly smaller than its predecessors. It still takes up more desk space than a standard keyboard, but the beached whale has been substantially reduced in scale.

Connectivity is via Bluetooth or the included Logi Bolt USB receiver, with Easy-Switch allowing movement between up to three devices. Battery life is quoted at up to three years on two AAA batteries, which is the kind of specification that means you stop thinking about it entirely. The key switches are membrane rather than mechanical – quiet, with enough travel to register clearly without becoming tiring over a long working day.

In practice

For touch typing specifically, haptic feedback matters. You need to know that a key has been pressed without looking at it, and without that confirmation becoming a constant distraction. The Wave Keys gets this right – the key travel is long enough to register clearly, soft enough not to fatigue. Within a day or two it felt entirely natural.

The Logi Options+ software allows customisation of shortcuts and layout, but installing it on a university machine with a dedicated IT team is an exercise in institutional patience I have not yet undertaken. As it happens, the out-of-the-box functionality is sufficiently good that this has not been a problem. It simply works.

It works well enough, in fact, that I now own two. At work the Logi Bolt receiver handles the connection without any fuss. At home, where USB ports are in shorter supply, I use Bluetooth – and it has been as reliable as the foldable ergonomic keyboard I used through the pandemic and beyond. That keyboard has now been retired to travel duties only.

A qualified recommendation

Whether the Wave Keys suits you will depend considerably on how you type. For someone who uses all fingers and relies on the keyboard to confirm each keystroke, it is excellent. For someone who types with two fingers on a flat keyboard and has never given the matter much thought, the learning curve may not be worth it.

For touch typists looking to move on from a larger ergonomic keyboard, or for anyone whose desk is running short of space and whose wrists are starting to register a complaint, it is a genuine improvement.

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