I have a similar experience. Actual call quality is far superior in Teams than Meet in almost every regard. Clarity for users dialed in over SIP is much better, stream quality is typically better, virtual backdrops perform better, and screensharing video performs so much better it's almost no comparison - it is essentially unusable in Meet, feels more or less the same way as screensharing video in 2016 was.

But yikes, every step of the experience up until actually joining the call is just brutal. And if you join the meeting from the browser instead of the native application, a lot of the better performance in-call is gone.