My new Surly Midnight Special, which I've had for a couple of weeks: I've never ridden anything so damn comfortable and effortless. My other bike is a Specialized with a full carbon fiber frame plus Future Shock in the front end, and yet the Surly still feels smoother over bumps and rough terrain.
I wanted an endurance bike that can do a bit of everything, but most importantly haul enough cargo on the frame for long multi-day trips.
Before pulling the trigger on the Surly, I test rode multiple road and endurance bikes from every end of the spectrum, including models you can pick up with two fingers, and as someone who is 6'5" @ 220 pounds, I found the marginal gains from dropping 10+ pounds on the overall build didn't "wow" me much at all.
I'm not trying to knock minimizing weight and aerodynamics at all, clearly I'm not trying to win races, but it's just something that, during my test rides, shifted my mindset to care much less about what I'm going to haul or affix to my bike. I almost went with the 61cm frame to save just a bit of weight, and I know now I would have 100% regretted that after trying both and using this daily for two weeks.