I bought an Ergodox EZ a few years ago. While I enjoyed it at first, I realized that I was avoiding certain workflows because it lacked arrow and function keys, forcing you to rely on different layers.
I like split keyboards, and I also like thumb clusters, but I’d really prefer something with dedicated arrow and function keys.
Since you’re talking Ergodox, do you still want column-staggered? For row staggered you probably need the Dygma Raise if you want a thumb cluster.
This might also be useful: https://yal-tools.github.io/ergo-keyboards/