I wouldn’t buy one just for media. Even premium media players like NVIDIA SHIELD TV or Apple TV cost less than Xbox Series S.

To each their own. I find cheats very fun (in single player games)

It should not be enabled by default.

Basically SD Maid 2. Is there any reason to still use the original?

Annoying (I also purchased it). Thankfully the app is open source and still available on GitHub Releases and IzzyOnDroid.

They don’t, but there’s a fork.

This has not been my experience. I always turn on Play Protect but almost never recieve warnings about APKs. I install plenty of apps outside of the Play Store, even some sketchy ones. The only one that ever gave me a Play Protect warning is Lucky Patcher.