The raw power that you feel in your hand when using VIM is amazing, I never get that feeling with Emacs, but each to their own. Not needing to reach for the arrow keys, backspace etc. is neat too.
I think the raw _editing_ power of Vim is, as you say, probably unmatched in Emacs. Vim, however, cannot hold a candle to all the rest of Emacs and its elisp-y goodness. I'm a long-time Emacs user, and having recognized that Vim's modal editing and "language" are a better way of editing, opted for using Evil-mode, which gives you the best of both worlds. The transition was not without pain, but it was overall quick and worthy.
elisp is not such a great language, so the value of editing using a pile of it is mixed. It boils down to a matter of taste. If you like elisp, it's a big win and if you don't, it's a deal-breaker.
It is a great language when run inside Emacs for doing Emacs stuff. Elisp is orders of magnitude more powerful than Vimscript on Vim. Its easy to see by the best things each community has produced on their editors.
Disclaimer: I love all 3 editors for they all have great ideas.
in my experience using emacs reaching for the meta key is worse than reaching for the arrow keys. at least with arrow keys you don't need to morph your hand into pretzel.
