I agree and I'd like to know what's your take on the Fira font family? I've configured my desktop and browser to use this font and now I can't go back. Subjectively I kind of developed a little crush on that font and I'm interested if it also has technical merit or if I'm just making things up in my mind.
Fira was designed by world-class type designers, and it’s only free thanks to the funding by Mozilla and Here, so yes, definitely a different category.
I do like Fira, and definitely one of the few exceptions. Although I wish the lowercase 'y' were a bit less busy, with the left stroke completely joining into the right descender rather than how it is now, with a little bit sticking out. Additionally I must point out that Fira itself is a derivative (I'd say 'clone') of FF Meta, which was originally commissioned by Deutsche Bundespost.
Another commenter pointed out IBM Plex which I also like, but I have a bit of an issue with the lowercase Roman 'a' glyph, where the bottom curve into the vertical is a tad bit too thin for my liking.
As a rule of thumb, if a company has paid a foundry a handsome sum of money for its corporate branding and wants to use the resultant typeface everywhere, the result is usually quite decent, and has what I call 'character without being excessively fancy'.
