The previous SE was at least a generation behind the current flagship. The fact that this one is the same speed as the current flagship is really, really impressive.
I'm surprised by the recommendation to buy the higher-capacity one. With iCloud now able to offload photos and apps I'm not using, I see little reason to have a phone with massive capacity. I would buy the 64 GB version and it would do just fine.
Incidentally, I had my old SE replaced in December, and as part of the troubleshooting with my old phone, I set up the new one manually, instead of automatically porting all my apps over. The resulting digital minimalism has been amazing. I only load up stuff on my phone that I really need. I went from four screens packed full of apps to fewer than two.
In fairness, when the previous SE launched, in March 2016, it had the same SoC / internals as the then 6 month old iPhone 6s. So same setup with this SE. Though I imagine it’ll probably be similar in that it spends several years without any changes and slowly looks less impressive next to other options.