evil (the vim emulator for emacs) is fantastic, but the argument that emacs + evil must be equivalent or better than vim is also flawed. For example, plenty of emacs modes and packages have extensive keybindings that clash with vim, so the emacs + evil experience will never be as smooth as vim and its own native packages that were designed with vim's interface in mind.

Yes, you can give up the vim bindings in certain modes, or spend lots of time re-configuring various packages' bindings. But that is not something you'd ever have to struggle with when using vim.

Its not flawed. The greatest use case for editor is editing text. Even the small differences in efficiency in the main use case pile up enormously on the long run. Thats why people practice vim golf - to make micro optimizations that will lead to huge benefit.

The argument emacs can do frames is irrelevant in this respect.

You suppose that the only measure of efficiency is keybindings. It is not. For me, other aspects of the editor, such as frames, superior auto-completion, and superior compilation mode, make me more efficient. I don't use an editor solely to "edit text." I'm using to to accomplish a bigger objective, such as creating or fixing a program. Overall, Emacs is better at that, and the fact that I can give it bindings that mimic those in Vim also helps.