I'm using one right now and quite frankly? I'm very happy with it, there's some bloat you can remove, has unlockable bootloader and can be rooted, it's very customizable, good performance, good camera... The only real annoyance I've run into is MIUI comes with some battery optimization options that can screw up some apps running in the background, it can be disabled on a per app basis though.

Honestly, I'd say it's a pretty good mid budget phone.

I had a much older Note (maybe a 4x?) and it was great. Eventually I wasn't able to upgrade to newer android though.