One thing that stuck out is in their Simplify [1] article, they recommend not having multiple savings accounts for medium to long term savings goals because that's complicated and the budget takes care of it in a simpler way.

In Mint it would be confusing to do that with a budget alone (the money accumulates as a negative budget amount and just looks like you're under budget by more every month), but they have the Goal feature that links a target date and amount with both a budget and one or more accounts (checking, savings, brokerage, etc.). Mint checks the balances for reporting goal progress.

I don't find this to be complicated or cause an excess focus on the location of money. The clear visibility is helpful and puts a sharp focus on both the budget and the (now smaller) balance of the main checking cash flow account. I know I'm not touching emergency savings, anniversary vacation savings, or whatever because there's no way to access the money without manually transferring it out of the dedicated savings account.

Is YNAB so good that one can really clearly see what is going on with both short term cash flow and slightly longer term savings going through just the budget and a checking account?

[1] https://www.youneedabudget.com/learn/guide/simplify