I get the same feeling with this sort of thing. I did try Kagi and stuck with it for the last year. It's pretty good, but not without it's faults.

- Out of the box, search result quality is comparable to Google

- Search is slow. Latency for most queries is about a second. Sometimes 3 seconds. Google is shockingly fast in comparison.

- Personalized results is a killer feature (blocking, boosting and suppressing domains)

- There is no iOS app. Only one in beta that is seemingly abandoned.

- Their site/app design is just passable at best

- Their AI quick answers give solid answers and are pretty concise