Initially i bought nexus/pixel phones for clean android experience and no bloat.
Staying with pixel mainly for camera quality and free storage on Google Photos.
Its not ideal, but I'm used to it. They never try to do something too gimmicky and it feels like phone made by Google will work best with the os made by google so my experience will be most consistent, but i haven't tried other phones in a while.
It's better than ipad anyway. You just stick it in to load music onto it, you don't need iTunes or a cable, and it's nore compact too. I miss those simple devices.