[mdbauman]

I've tried a similar setup with a Novation Launchpad that I had bought to function as a sort of Stream Deck before this product existed (but without the little displays of course.) It's just a MIDI controller, so I could use a [piano-style] keyboard too.

Although my normal keyboard does still have function keys and a numpad, I like being able to map annoying shortcuts to individual buttons. For example, Photoshop's "Merge Visible Layers" (default Ctrl+Shift+E) is hell on my wrist, so I map it to a button on the MIDI controller.

It's also nice having extra buttons to access F13-F24 for whatever behavior I want since virtually nothing uses them by default.