Some years ago, I had the common classic keyboard which was somewhat hard to clean. I had some spare hours left, and a keyboard that wasn’t cleaned for 5 years.  What to do next? Right, cleaning my keyboard. And the amount of dirt, it was shocking. That’s why I want to introduce three keyboards that are easy to clean, but are also harder to get dirty.

Three dust-proof keyboards

Logitech Washable Keyboard K310 ›

Logitec-K310-Washable-Keyboard
Image shot by Christian Schnettelker

This is the keyboard I am personally using, and I really love it. Besides that the design is looking quite good, the keys are stacked upon the bottom rectangle of the keyboard, which makes it harder for any dirt to become stuck in the keyboard, as occasionally happens with regular keyboards. While reviews point out that typing is somewhat clumsy, I find this keyboard quite comfortable to type with. It gets around a week to get used to this keyboard, but afterwards it types as well as my former keyboards.

I had expected similar keyboards from other manufacturers, but there are hardly any comparable keyboards which I could find. The bad thing is that I heard Logitech has discontinued the production of this keyboard, while many users find it a very good dust and dirt proof keyboard. Too bad!

Silver-Storm Washable Medical Keyboard ›

Silver Storm Medical Grade Keyboard

Wetkeys is one of the larger players offering washable and waterproof keyboards, ranging from foldable to medical grade keyboards. Many of their keyboards are dishwasher safe, posses antimicrobial capabilities and have lifetime warranty. The Silver-Storm Washable Medical Grade Keyboard is one of their cheaper keyboards which already has the previous mentioned attributes.

Another player in the field of industry grade keyboards is Seal Shield, and they offer a great quantity of equal or similar washable, waterproof keyboards (Wetkeys is basically reselling many of Siel Shields keyboards). But if you are an average computer user, industry grade keyboards might just be to much.

Cool Leaf by Minebea ›

Cool-Leaf-Minnebea-Touch-Screen-Keyboard

While this keyboard is not washable, it won’t get dirty by dust easily. Why? Because it is a keyboard made out of a touch screen, so there is little chance dirt or crumbles could get between the keys and it is very easy to clean. The keyboard even provides technology to give haptic feedback and input for multiple characters. I’d say that is a highly customizable keyboard, and it is also aesthetically very pleasing.

The bad thing? This keyboard is obviously not washable and is way more expensive to buy.

Some background: how it all began

Surviving 5 years of eating cookies, drinking beverages and cats walking over and over above the keyboard, it was time for cleaning. Yes, of course the outside was cleaned occasionally, but the inside on the contrary….  So I started removing the keys, by using a letter opener as a leverage to get them out.

free-keys

And then, the mess revealed himself. Oooh, what a pure gross. Luckily I could get my vacuum cleaner and suck all gross away.

Dirty Keyboard

While the keyboard was pretty good, I decided to go to a new keyboard, in which dirt and dust would not so easily get stuck.