Having been doing roms since my OG Droid (boy the roms were pretty bad back then!), I've worked through the available phones that meet my requirements.

There are valid reasons to use something other than a Pixel - price and screen brightness have been 2 drivers for me.

It's only been in the last year or so that Pixel prices have hit a point where I'm willing to upgrade from my 2017 flagship (Essential Ph1), which I picked up 4 for about $80 each. In 2019 it was hard to beat the combination of price, ram, storage, cpu, brightness and hardware that the Ph1 offered, while also being fully unlocked, always.

Running Lineage, these have been phenomenal. Even today everyone is shocked at how fast my phones are - they're more responsive than most, even friends' flagships. This is because the OS is already slimmed down, and by rooting, I can further tweak things like OOM, cpu clocks, etc. And zero bloat.

And with those better cpu timings, the battery life is surprising, while the phone is even more responsive, and even with a nice, bright IPS screen. I can get probably 6hrs a day out of them, and I hammer on my phones.

I dislike large or heavy phones, and materials like ceramic/glass (yea, like the Ph1). Today the Pixel 4 and 5 are at a size I like, materials I like, and an actual upgrade from the Ph1 (this has been a challenge, since the Ph1 was a flagship), while at a reasonable price (~$130). Until recently Pixels just cost more while offerrng me nothing that I didn't already have.

Everyone's use-case is different, which means saying "Get a Pixel" or any phone isn't useful. I can use small screens, I'd love a phone like the old Samsung S4, it was a fantastic size/weight. Hell, I'd carry an S3 Mini if it had the hardware. I have family and friends that need larger screens because their vision ain't great, for them I start looking for phones by screen size. They also don't need root or flashing, while I do.