My biggest problem with it now is the official React team pushes it as their framework of choice. Back when it used the Pages Router and wasn't trying to push everything into server components, etc., it wasn't terrible but I can't help but feel bad for any newcomers trying to learn web development.

I switched to Astro from Next for most projects and haven't looked back. It's such a breath of fresh air to use.

Next.js was a godsend when it came out because of how easy it made SSR. Many React projects don't need SSR, but for those that do it was technically complicated and time-consuming to hand-roll it.

I was part of a successful large project where we did our own SSR implementation, and we were always tinkering with it. It wasted a lot of time. Next.js "just worked". I've used Next with the pages router on two significant and complex projects and it was a great choice. I have no regrets choosing it.