It was expensive, only had 8k of ram, the sound chip is horrible. It had lots of colours (like the Atari 2600), but limited sprites.
POKEY has a distinctive sound and well used usually beats the Texas or GI rivals. It's just a matter of taste but it's far from horrible
Miner's chipset design was mindblowing from the beginning, I'm not going to say that it's superior that VICII+SID (that I really believe it's not); but given the date, it's an extremely powerful design.
Last years we've been enjoying developments pushing the architecture to its limits and are truly amazing for a 79' dated machine.
