That's the feeling I got from just reading it, though I can't figure out why. Maybe if I actually played it I'd have a better impression. I dunno.
Ever had a class where the teacher really pushed everyone, and everyone learned something whether they wanted to or not? How about the opposite, where the class was a complete waste of time no matter how dedicated you were to the subject? Most classes are in the middle, right? You more or less get out what you put into it, and the quality of the teacher goes a long way towards saying whether it leans to "more" or "less".
5E is in that last category, and it is dead center in it. It has a lot of options, some good some not so hot. The combination of options and how you pick them and how the GM runs it is going to wildly swing the experience. The defaults lean heavily towards "less" when it comes to a good experience, which is neither a help reading the thing nor for that matter teaching new GMs.
I'm not going to run it anymore, because WotC has turned into assholes, but the game, at least as originally launched, has a lot of good aspects to it.