Thank you for the comparison and your opinions / conclusions.
I guess, your perceived better authenticity of QC drives could be due to the fact that they aren’t component based models but rather “deep captures” (an inofficial term floating around in some videos / threads). Maybe certain nuances are easier to capture than to model. However, the greater amount of adjustable drive parameters on the HX device is a benefit due to the component based modeling approach because you can’t capture parameters which are not adjustable on the captured pedal but it’s rather simple to make various model parameters adjustable by the user.
Today, I wouldn’t expect a drastically different quality of drive blocks in any of the top tier modellers / profilers etc. Especially for companies who are able to accurately model complex tube amps, modelling drive pedals shouldn’t be a great challenge due to their relatively simple circuits.
As a matter of fact, digital emulations of drive pedals were already surprisingly good decades ago, as you can see in the video which I referred to in the following thread: Just for fun, I captured a Digitech DF-7 pedal with all settings as in JHS video
Let’s not talk about whether it’s a good idea to capture a pedal that digitally emulates the original though 