I mainly like the keybindings that are the same for several programs.
Terminals usually use Emacs' keybindings by default: C-b (one character backward), C-f (one character forward), C-t (to transpose, i.e., swap two characters), C-d (to delete one character), M-b (one word backward), M-f (one word forward), M-t (transpose two words), M-d (delete the end of the word; M-backspace to delete the beginning), C-r (reverse search, i.e., search the history in the terminal), C-p (to go to the previous line, i.e., the previous command in the history in the terminal), C-k (to kill, i.e., cut from the cursor to the end of the line), C-y (to yank, i.e., copy what was cut), C-a and C-e (to go to the beginning/end of the line), etc.
Notice that, contrary to vim, Emacs' keybindings "make sense": the letters usually mean something and Meta (Alt on most keyboards) usually allows to apply an action at the level of words when Ctrl was used to apply it at the level of characters.
I think the only real downsides are a slower startup (we're probably talking about a couple of seconds, which is meaningless)
What takes that time is to start a graphical window. 'emacs -nw' executes Emacs in the terminal (of course, -nw is not needed if 'emacs' is executed in a "real" terminal). And then there is 'emacsclient' to tell a running Emacs to open a file (rather than running Emacs several times).
the keybindings that are supposedly hard on the pinky finger (maybe the only real reason not to favor Emacs).
That is true if you know how to type on a keyboard, which I do not (I mainly used my index and middle fingers and thumbs for Space, Ctrl, Alt and Shift). A colleague who knows how to type remapped Caps Lock to Ctrl (if I remember well).
It's supposedly less intuitive I disagree. Modes are not intuitive in my opinion.
