My daily drivers are 44-keys, keyboard.io Atreus layout. It's taken me quite a bit of tuning to avoid excessive chording with what's on each layer while keeping things conceptually related, but it feels like I've had fewer trade-offs to navigate than this. It does surprise me that this particular configuration of keys (5x4+2) isn't more popular - you don't have quite the number of contortions that the 5x3+3 pads force you into, and you don't have the bulk and extra stretch of the next common size up, which seems to be 6x4+2...