Great question — we actually went back and forth on this a lot during design. The short answer: going full ortholinear or columnar (like Kinesis or Charybdis) has a learning curve that can take weeks to adapt to, and once you're used to it, going back to a regular keyboard is genuinely hard. For a lot of people that's a dealbreaker, especially if you also use a work laptop or another computer that isn't ergo. Elytra takes a different approach — zero learning curve by keeping the standard row-staggered layout, but still gets about 90% of the ergonomic benefit from the split design alone. The tenting kit and wrist rest are available for users who want to go deeper on ergonomics, but they're optional. The whole philosophy is: the best ergonomic keyboard is the one you'll actually use every day without retraining your hands. Also worth noting: the split design means each hand positions naturally — that's the single biggest ergonomic win, and it costs you nothing in learning time.
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