Hangouts Meet actually works very well overall. I work at Google and almost never have problems with it.
Hangouts Chat, on the other hand...well okay, it seems reliable enough, doesn't have that problem that old Hangouts did. Comparing the UX to Discord just makes me sad though.
This has been my experience as well (with some relatively large Hangouts Meet meetings in a big G Suite org). Compared with old-fashioned Hangouts, Meet is pretty reliable.
