This is all just your personal preference. From what you said you need very discernible keys so you are assured you are hitting what you want. I personally just need Alot of keys and there are more for the left hand than the right, which is usually on my mouse anyways so I am a QWEASD user.

I will chime in saying I like Logitech's hardware, alot of people do use those XPads though, I have just not figured out why yet (I do not need THAT many keys... yet?)