I need my ESC, so I'm glad it's there. As for the rest of the keys on the top row, I was not in the habit of using them except in vim, where I hooked them up to some macros I had written. For them, I kind of like the touchbar now, because I have the fake keys labelled with sensible names. (No more trying to remember that I have to hit F3 to do such-and-such.)

I've also found the touchbar pretty useful in zoom calls, because my zoom client shows keys for common actions.

All in all, I think a physical escape key plus the touchbar is a slight win. I would not pay more for it, but I have reversed my previous opinion that I'd pay more not to have it.

I suspect these new machines are going to be quite nice, although I won't buy one for a while since I purchased a mbp a few months ago.