Reviewers mostly praise Zed for feeling unusually fast, lean, and pleasant to use, especially compared with heavier editors like VS Code. They repeatedly call out quick launch times, low memory use, smooth handling on older machines, strong Rust and TypeScript workflows, and useful built-in AI and collaboration features. The main caveat is depth: several users say the extension ecosystem is lighter than full IDEs, and one founder using said Python LSP performance and some Vim bindings were frustrating.