I'm looking for opinions (hopefully educated ones ) on brackets for a floating shelfs. Seems to be two types. The traditional ones with shafts that stick 6"-8" out of the wall and french cleat style like the Hovr brackets.

It's been a long time since I've done a free body diagram on a statics problem, but intuitively, the extended shafts don't seem to add any value. The load would still all be cantilevered of the wall mount. Am I missing something.

I like the fact that you can use a screw to tighten the Hovr style, but it's aluminum which is not all that stiff

thanks in advance