I know people often raved about #MPV but as someone who's used #VLC for a really long time, even back on #Windows, I didn't bother since VLC too for the longest time was people's number 1 recommendation due to how vastly superior and compatible it is with almost all videos compared to its counterparts at the time. Also MPV is super barebones by default.
Now, I completely switched camps though. I have MPV installed since it's an optional dependency for #WallpaperEngine on #KDEPlasma, and there actually were times that VLC wasn't playing certain videos at all or weren't playing them right - anytime these happens I fallback to MPV and it's just never not worked.
Also there were some VLC features such as transforming a video that would work on some videos but not others seemingly of the same format etc. but somehow these features always worked on MPV 100% of the time.
As mentioned though, MPV is super barebones by default so I had to google how to do certain things I only know how to do on VLC, which led me to discover how to configure these things for MPV and it boggles my mind just how easy it is. Yes, some might get turned off at the fact that they need to, for example, write something to a config file in order to control the volume with the arrow up and down keys - BUT, you only need to do it once and these configurations are all one-liners (and ofc optional). Most importantly, the amount of things you could do to configure MPV, again super easily, is insane - it's like someone gave you a Lego set for you to build the perfect video player for you - 'cept it takes a couple of mins instead of hours.
Definitely convinced now and have set MPV as the default from now on instead of VLC. I still recommend keeping VLC around though for folks who are just more familiar with it since 95% of the time, it's still a solid player.