I definitely vote for the Piantor by Beekeeb

I chose to build a Cantor (https://github.com/diepala/cantor) partially because I liked the diodeless design, the thumb cluster that is a bit splayed out and I didn’t want to commit to a 3x5 layout like in the cheapino. I pretty happy with it.

My first split was the sofle choc v1.2. I maybe wouldn’t recommend it over the v3 now that I’ve tried both but both are still very good!

I liked the SplitKB Kyria. But my wrists did not (through no fault of the keyboard - wrist injury).

Split keyboards are niche enough that the cheapest option I found was building it myself (with pcbs by jclpcb). Ones I looked at are corne, cheapino, lily58, and ferris sweep but I settled on the chocofi and have been loving it

Edit: my goal was to find something “corne-like” as there seems to be good resources for it and I wanted to try the miryoku firmware

I started with an Afternoon Breeze (https://www.afternoonlabs.com/breeze/). I have since built a Sofle RGB (https://josefadamcik.github.io/SofleKeyboard/build_guide_rgb.html), with a second Sofle RGB planned to leave at the office.