I think emacs falls in the same camp as vim in this regard. Setting up emacs is just as painful as setting up vim.

Check out spacemacs, it works beautifully out of the box.

Spacemacs is only good if you actually use it consistently throughout the day.

From the prompt, it is faster to open a large file in vim than emacs since you have to wait for all of the spacemacs plugins to load.

If you like searchable multiple-choice configuration, there's always customize.

M-x customize

That doesn't help emacs noobs at all. Half the Emacs term still used today 40 years after being coined don't make any sense. Wait - this is not the Window, but the... Frame? What?

Emacs terminology for the uninitiated. http://wikemacs.org/wiki/Emacs_Terminology

frame -> X window

buffer -> tab

window -> tile