If you pick decent indexers and buy enough traffic it's absurdly good. Especially if you're into less than mainstream material or tend to try many things out before you settle on a binge, because if it's in the search result it's almost sure to be on your disk within minutes and you don't need to keep a cache for days or weeks because of hit'n'run rules.

Politically I prefer torrenting, due to the social character and openness and so on, but Usenet has none of the fuss beyond a bit of setup and configuration.