> For some reason Solarized just looks outdated to me

That might just be some kind of fatigue because I've experienced the opposite recently!

I've been a happy user of Visual Studio Code's default dark theme for a few years, and one day I snapped and just couldn't stand looking at it anymore. I switched to Solarized Light (yeah) and I find it extremely refreshing. I just had to tweak the color for "deleted block" in the scrollbar which was way too close to the "compilation error" color.

I guess some people just need change sometimes!