I haven't honestly used Gog galaxy even when it launched. Is it a better downloader than other competing ones?

It works, generally. It keeps installed games up to date, and manages cloud saves mostly ok. It has some issues, but generally does what is advertised. It's no good for mass downloading, but works ok for backing up offline installers for games on an individual or small scale basis.

Some say it's great, others that it's awful. Whether it's better or worse than the alternatives is a personal opinion.

You have the option of treating it similar to Steam - interacting with GOG and using the games entirely through the client with one-click installs, automatic updates and whatnot, and you have the option of using it solely as a downloader to get the installers so that you can install them on your offline gaming machine (for example), or something in between.

The best way of getting to know the application is to try it.

It delivers what it promises, if you enjoy that sort of thing. I use it for convenience, but I still launch my games outside of Galaxy most of the times due to mods.

I still keep my installers backed up as a principle. If I own the game, I wanna store the file I own somewhere.

Unnecessary.

I had a dog and his name was...

BINGO!

Well, I have been told many times recently that I am too negative here, so that's the one positive I could come up with.

I like it and it is optional.I use it for new games that need to be updated regularly.

I don't want to touch it.

I have absolutely no problems with Galaxy at all.

Which would be the competing ones? The classic GOG downloader (3.6 https://www.gog.com/downloader) still works well and the browser based downloads also work well (my browser knows how to continue an interrupted download).

All in all I would expect that all competing downloaders are equally well suited. The bottleneck is probably the download speed of your internet connection.

Doing frequent updates of games (for those games that need that) might be easier and faster with Galaxy.

It exists.

Not for my primary OS, but when I used it, that's basically what it did.

Given that it is completely optional, I have no problems with it. Really useful for games with frequent updates (not having to re-download everything again).

I personally don't use it to launch games but it can also log the amount of time you have played a game if you are into that sort of thing.