@galdor agreed! Home row mods were a big win for me with emacs on my corne kbd. I did end up using helix for half a year, and even base nvi on OpenBSD after switching to the split kbd. Still use those daily, for my recreational hacking, because they feel good.
Eventually went back to emacs for work, because of terminal mgmt and buffer movement and project.el and magit and org mode and eglot and pdf-mode and flymake and dired… Just too damn productive