I agree with you on this one, I've never understood the fascination with Chrome. Safari has done a pretty good job of maintaining a clean and simple UI along with being reliable.

If there was a downside I guess it would be in the realm of extensions/plugins where Chrome probably has a leg up. That's where I decided to make the jump to Brave. All the same Chrome extensions without the Google nonsense (and built in ad blocker).

I still really like Safari though and would likely use it daily if it had a built-in ad blocker.

It isn’t free but 1Blocker works well across iOS and macOS devices for ad blocking. I am not affiliated with them; just have had it for the last 3 years.