Midjourney v6 represents a massive generational leap, moving from "artistic interpretation" to startling photorealism. While the user interface remains its biggest hurdle, the raw image quality is currently unmatched by competitors like DALL-E 3 or Stable Diffusion.
The Good
Legible Text: For the first time, Midjourney can reliably render text. You can ask for text on neon signs, t-shirts, or sticky notes, and it will actually spell the words correctly.
Photorealism: The "plastic/smooth" AI look is largely gone. Skin textures, lighting, and imperfections look terrifyingly real. It produces images that are often indistinguishable from actual photography.
Natural Language Prompting: You no longer need to spam keywords like "4k, octane render, award-winning." v6 understands conversational sentences and complex grammar much better than previous versions.
Composition Control: It handles multiple subjects and specific positioning instructions much better than v5.
The Bad
The Discord Interface: Despite a web alpha being rolled out to heavy users, most people still have to generate images via Discord commands. This feels clunky, chaotic, and unintuitive compared to DALL-E’s integration with ChatGPT.
No Free Tier: Midjourney has effectively eliminated its free trials. You must pay a monthly subscription to use it.
Steep Learning Curve: While it understands natural language better, mastering aspect ratios, stylize parameters, and consistency commands (--cref, --sref) still requires study.
Conclusion
If you need the highest fidelity images possible and don't mind paying a monthly fee and navigating a chat app to get them, Midjourney v6 is the undisputed king. If you want ease of use and free generation, stick to DALL-E 3 (via Bing/Copilot).