In my experience (and I've lived in a few different areas), the other three major carriers are almost always better choices than Sprint. All in all, Sprint has by far the most poorly deployed wireless network in the United States. A lot of this stems from the fact that they dragged their customers through years of unfulfilled 4G promises (cough...WiMax) in many markets before they finally jumped on the LTE bandwagon and they're slowly catching up to everyone else. I was a Sprint customer for over 10 years before I had finally had it with two things: No 4G data (at the time) in Phoenix and absolute crap handset selection (not to mention no iPhones at the time). And for the record, Sprint has the WORST customer service. I've gotten much better customer service from both T-Mobile and AT&T.
The reason Sprint gives so much for seemingly so little is because they HAVE to in order to remain competitive. AT&T and Verizon charge a premium for what you're getting and I can't help to think that it's rightfully so -- they have the network infrastructure to back up their prices. T-Mobile is great for LTE speeds when you're in good coverage areas, but they too don't quite have the overall consistency of AT&T and Verizon. I really like T-Mobile's pricing tiers a lot (and their data speed in Phoenix), but I currently use AT&T because they give me much better voice coverage at my house.