Love the neo bike. Huge step up from what I had (kickr snap) so can't comment on difference between direct drive.
There's just no faff, no calibration, no maintainance (so far, I know early models had some really silly things wrong - I would be very annoyed if it stopped working).
Made a big difference to how well I can use zwift through the smoothness of the gearing system, probably less jarring on the knees (I basically hd 3 gears previously so there was a lot of grinding up climbs). I can also select same gears as my own bike and set it up the exact same very easily, at the same time as being able to adapt it for my wife to use it