A year ago I pulled the pfSense box out and put a MikroTik in its place, mostly because the old hardware was a noisy power-hungry tower and I wanted something that lived quietly on a shelf. Twelve months later the verdict is: I would do it again, but I would not tell a friend to without a warning attached.
The good is genuinely good. RouterOS routes at line rate on hardware that costs less than a decent meal out, and once it is configured it just sits there. My uptime since the swap is embarrassing to admit because it makes me sound like I never touch it. The firewall and queue tools are powerful in a way pfSense's GUI gestured at but rarely let me reach.
The cost is the learning curve, and it is steep and unapologetic. RouterOS does not hold your hand. A default config will happily leave you exposed if you do not understand the order rules fire in, and the terminology assumes you already think like a network engineer. I bricked my access to the box twice in the first month and learned to keep a serial console to hand.
What do I miss from pfSense? The package ecosystem, honestly. pfBlockerNG, easy WireGuard, the dashboard that told a non-expert what was going on. On MikroTik I rebuilt those things by hand, which taught me a lot but ate a weekend I will not get back.
So: faster, cheaper, quieter, and it made me better at networking. Just do not buy one expecting an appliance. You are buying a kit, and the assembly is the point.