I also landed on the Iris rev 7, and it being my first I went with getting it prebuilt plus not having a soldering setup. Also, one decision was comparing the shape and size of keyboards using splitkb compare site. The Ergodox EZ and Moonlander were way too spread out for my hands to deal with so I chose Iris. Ended up cheaper than either with no included switches and now I’m practicing how to use only three rows and layers since it’s way more comfortable to not move your hands from the home row.
That isn’t to say I am not regretting it. The oryx software that ZSA has looks amazingly powerful out the box. VIA is annoyingly limited in how it utilizes its Any key so advanced configuration is also limited. Vial, while having more features, would require reflashing due to some tap_dance_count error which is annoying. If I had more time I would just use QMK but it’s way faster prototyping visually and adjusting to how you end up using the keys daily.
I like the design but yea the price is insanely high for this keyboard.