^[ is also a good alternative to escape key. I use it even on keyboards which have an escape key, because it’s nearer, and is available by default in Vim and Vim emulators.
Edit: I just practiced for a minute and jj/jk are more pleasant than ^[. I added settings for it to my vimrc as well as VSCode and I’m planning to use it instead of ^[ in future.
Thank you for this tip!