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60% keyboards

60% keyboards from Akko, Anne Pro, NovelKeys and more. 61 keys, no arrows, no F-row — minimalist and portable. Compare layouts, hot-swap and wireless options.

28 keyboards · $60–$199

A 60% keeps the letters, the number row and the modifiers, and drops everything else — no function row, no arrow cluster, no navigation keys. Roughly 61 keys against a full-size board's 104. Everything you removed still works; it moves to a layer you reach with Fn.

That is the whole trade, and whether it suits you comes down to one question: how often do you reach for the arrows without thinking? If the answer is "constantly", a 65% gives them back for about two centimetres of desk width.

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What the 60% catalog actually looks like

We track 29 sixty-percent boards from 8 brands, and two numbers stand out.

Every single one is hot-swap. 100%, with no exceptions — the only other layout that manages this is Alice-split. Nobody is still soldering switches into a 60%, because nobody buys one by accident. It is a deliberate second or third keyboard, and the people buying it expect to change the switches.

Only 45% are wireless — the lowest share of any size we track, and the number most people guess wrong. The smallest, most portable layout is the most likely to need a cable. Full-size boards, which nobody carries anywhere, are wireless 73% of the time. The reason is who buys what: 60% is enthusiast territory, and enthusiast builds prioritise a solid wired connection and a coiled cable over battery management. Wireless full-size boards are office purchases.

The price floor is $69 and the median $100 — the highest median of any mainstream layout except TKL, and higher than the full-size boards at $85 that are physically twice the size. Small is not cheap here. You are paying for a niche.

Living with layers

The part nobody explains before you buy: a 60% is not harder to type on, it is harder to navigate on. Letters are unchanged. What changes is everything you do between typing — jumping to the end of a line, tabbing through a form, hitting F2 to rename a file.

Most 60% boards map arrows to Fn plus IJKL or the right-hand modifier cluster, and most are QMK or VIA programmable so you can move them. Give it two weeks before deciding. The people who bounce off 60% usually bounce in the first three days.

Frequently asked

Do 60% keyboards have arrow keys?
Not dedicated ones. Arrows live on a layer, normally `Fn` plus `IJKL` or the right-hand modifiers, and on a programmable board you can move them wherever you like. Physically there are no separate arrow keys — that is what makes it a 60%.
Is a 60% good for gaming?
Yes, and it was popular with competitive FPS players before it was popular with anyone else. Removing the numpad and arrows gives the mouse more desk, which matters at low sensitivity. The friction is everything you do outside the game.
60% or 65%?
Buy the [65%](/keyboards/65) unless you have a specific reason not to. It adds a dedicated arrow cluster for about two centimetres of width, costs less on median ($88 against $100), and removes the single most common reason people abandon a 60%.
Why are 60% boards more expensive than bigger ones?
Because they are enthusiast products, not office products. Nobody mass-produces a cheap 60% for a corporate purchasing department, which is exactly what keeps [full-size](/keyboards/full) prices down.

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