As someone who's been a Stock Android fanboy and got his first Samsung in over a decade, the only significant change for me is:
Keep pop-up windows open – Instead of minimizing pop-up windows when you go to the Recents screen, pop-ups will now remain open after you leave the Recents screen so you can continue what you were working on.
Pulling down from top right corner to show the full quick actions menu. Now I need to swipe down twice to see all options, with this update only once. I will actually install the beta solely for this feature.
There's always the under-the-hood changes from Android upstream, and Samsung keeps adding customization options every update. Without rooting or 3rd party apps*, no other OEM comes close to OneUI's customizability. For me, that's a huge plus.
*I meant specifically 3rd party apps, because Samsung has the Good Lock suite of apps, which needs to be installed from the store. They work somewhat as a beta testing of features or advanced controls for existing features, and many of the features are added to new updates, for instance, the quick settings easy access up to One UI 5.1 (Android 13) is only available via Good Lock's Quick Star module, but seems to be built-in on One UI 6 (Android 14)
The “Quick Panel” [...] in terms of the look, it’s a pretty shameless copy of iOS’ Control Center
What is the penchant for these journalists to say everything looks/is copied from Apple? The quick settings menu looks nothing like iOS control center, unless they're talking about both having buttons and a blurred background. Also I believe Samsung's design is older than Apple's, at least first iterations of it.
You also need to check that your phone will get more updates and it hasn't reached its update quota. In that case getting the newer updates became trickier.
Just go to your settings and you can change your display name up whatever the fuck, and it allows emojis lol. My account name is just set to mojo and is regular