I dunno -- I find it much better than actual speakers.
With Atmos on the AirPods Pro, I can pinpoint the location of an instrument within about 5°. It's astonishing.
Whereas with the traditional 5.1 speaker setup... you definitely get the sense of center vs. side, and kind of a couple of "zones" in between, but I can never place the location of an instrument or sound as accurately as I can with the AirPods Pro. It's a much more diffuse directionality, rather than "it's coming from exactly there".
Plus, of course, I get to take my surround-sound music and audio everywhere. Not just my living room. So I don't know what "extremely limited usage scenarios" you're talking about? I mean, yes it needs to come through an Apple device, but that's all my media anyways.