I have used, and use, a lot of Pi's over the years, starting with a couple of 2's, which didn't impress me. My current stable has a 3, a trio of 4's and a box full of Zeros's. My use is for controlling stuff, so working with the GPIO is my emphasis. For controllers they work fine - my PCB drill press uses only a Zero for auto drill, my local model railroad club uses a 4 as a signal controller, and can access up to 4096 individual input/output lines over a single I2C pair. (Not that anywhere that many are hooked up, but the capability of the add-on HAT is there). I control cameras, a small router (metal, not Internet), gate and mailbox signals, Arduinos, etc.
However, even a Pi-4 is not an M1 Studio or an I9 PC by a very long shot. I stay in command line mode all the time on any Pi and I will agree that trying to use a GUI can be frustrating, especially after daily use of a modern desktop. For the right use, i.e controller or specific application driver, a PI almost cannot be beat - as a desktop replacement, not so much.