The early access preview (
http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html) is
definitely prettier than Eclipse. Not that that's a high bar to clear. It also seems to be less stable, which
is a high bar to clear. ;)
Yeah, I know, pre-release software.
The windows seem to take a long time to load, too. That strikes me as odd -- it's one thing when you're starting up some sort of interpreter, but several seconds to scan the project directory or open a file? Perhaps that's another pre-release issue.
The layout XML editor looks like a big win, though. The syntax awareness, suggestions, documentation access, formatting and just all around general helpfulness seem to be about 1000x better than Eclipse. That alone would make it worth the switch! I think the biggest time sink for me while working on layouts is remembering "what's the darn attribute for..." It's all right there in glorious detail.
The realtime WYSIWYG view is . . . cool, I guess. ADT already had that, though you had to switch to a different tab for it. Maybe I'm missing something; it doesn't seem that revolutionary to me. It still doesn't handle custom views, which I use a lot of. (And I mean a lot! Custom container views, too.) And I don't really like feedback while typing, anyway. YMMV, of course, but it looks to me like the big win is the text editor itself, not the graphical display.
I've been meaning to get off of Eclipse for a while now, so I'll play with it more and watch how it changes. For now, color me experimental and cautiously optimistic.