3. SwiftKey

Jeff Dunn/Business Insider

Now we get to the three keyboards you should really consider.

From a pure typing perspective, SwiftKey is tops. You have to use it a little bit for it to get there, but once you do, it requires the least amount of effort to get things right, quickly.

It does this in part with a “tap map,” which tailors the shape of the keyboard to the autocorrections it most frequently makes. Nothing looks different, but behind the scenes it could make, say, the Y and G keys more spacious, so you have less of a chance of hitting nearby letters by accident. You can tie it to your Gmail and Facebook account to personalize things further. Just know that you have to be comfortable sending your data to Microsoft, which bought SwiftKey last year.

None of this is flawless. Swiping is a bit less accurate than standard touch typing, and sometimes SwiftKey’s autocomplete will toss more common words in place of what you’re actually trying to type. But, again, it learns quickly enough, and I found its word predictions to be excellent (if not on Apple’s level). A recent redesign has made it look pretty slick, too: There are a good chunk of themes, and the whole thing now supports more than 100 languages.

So there’s a lot to like. SwiftKey’s problem is that the next two choices are almost as smooth to use, yet much more connected.