I switched to it a year ago and I like it. The biggest draw for me is it gives me back control and ownership over my phone. It gives you actual and thorough control over what apps can do on your phone including Google's apps, which on other typical Android OS are being given all or most permissions with no ability for you to deny access to any of them.
To gain almost all the functionality of a regular Android OS you can install Google Play Services and run it sandboxed, which means it will only do what you allow it to do and access only what you will allow it to access, which for me is the bare minimum before things stop working too much for my tastes.
Besides Android auto for now, the only thing that won't work for me on it is my banking app, probably because of all the security checks involved in it. But I just use the browser-based online service to do my banking operations instead.
My banking app is in the list and already has a number of reports against it reporting the same problem I have with it. Exploit protection compatibility mode was already enabled on my phone. The app just freezes upon startup ever since an update that rolled in later last year and as I said, this problem has already been reported by other users.
I think it's great, and have been daily driving it for I think almost 3 years now. With the addition of sandboxed Google Play services, there's little it can't handle.
ah, that's a shame. I'm heavily relying on google pay (also BLIK, but I'm usingboth polish and Ukrainian cards, and blik is a poland-only thingy) since i only have virtual credit cards right now. having everything (bank cards, govt ids etcs) on my phone is just too convinient to give up like that
I was concerned with this myself and planned to just add a physical card under my phone case, but I was suprised how little difference using the card normally made.
And if you care about privacy, you probably shouldn't make your purchases using a google app.
That's the vibe I got from it. It took longer to activate the app than it took to get a card out of my wallet. It had the potential to fail if my battery was flat. Google could track my shopping habits.
Upsides: Everything just works, no google tracking, creating a google account is optional and its easy to setup
Downsides: You aren't able to automatically backup the internal storage of apps without a lot of work (external files such as photos and documents are fine though)
I've been using it for about 1.5 years, I would recommend using it if possible
From my experience, its overall good. Its basically stock android, meaning no google smart features and apps by default, with more control over apps and google services. But for caution, some apps may break. You will have to mess around with the app settings to fix them. Also some apps will not work such as the google wallet app due to the OS not being acknowledged as official by google.
In short, its a more security focused OS that may require more involvement in configuration.
Get a Pixel and give it a shot. If it doesn't work for you the Pixels have amazing support in the custom ROM community so you'll be able to find something you like for sure.
I just moved from a Samsung - migration was a lot of manual work for me. Whether it's worth it depends on how much the increased security and control are worth to you. They were to me - I haven't had any issues otherwise.