In the time I wrote that, my opinion has changed slightly. If you compare the hardware between the Note 5 Pro and the A1/A2/A2 Lite, the Note 5 Pro is the winner (for me, at least). It's got the fastest/newest processor of the four AND it's got the biggest battery. The processor differences probably aren't a big deal for most things and you'll only notice it if you're gaming. Everyone was raving about the battery before I got this and I thought, big fucking deal, and now I can't even look at other phones cause of it! I still like smaller phones and once or twice a week I think maybe I should get a Nokia 6.1 or 7.1 as my daily driver, but then I always go back to the battery size hahaha
Now as far as the Xiaomi MIUI interface, I was a little hesitant to get the phone cause of it. I'll preface this by saying I am absolutely anal about the way my phones are set up. My icons and buttons have to be set up in a certain way, I don't want any apps installed that I'm not going to use, my settings have to be set up in a specific way, text size has to be a certain size, even the way I get my notifications. With that in mind I can say MIUI isn't bad. What bloat it has isn't terrible and a lot of it can be uninstalled or debloated without needing to unlock the bootloader or rooting it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Xiaomi/comm...at_the_note_5/
If you aren't weird like me (and most people aren't), it's really easy to get used to MIUI. It's got a lot of settings and customizations in it. So much so that it's even overwhelming sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I still installed the Pixel launcher and when the LineageOS comes out with an official Pie ROM and it's fully matured I'm going to switch to it, but until then I can live with it.
tl;dr: If I were to do it all over again I'd still go with the Note 5 Pro, but if the same phone came with Android One out-the-box, I'd pay more for it. I really think Xiaomi hit the ball out of the park with this model.