I’ve five bikes, only one of which, the road bike, has a 2x drivetrain. So you could say I’m a 1x fanboi. However as noted above, it really depends on your local area and riding style and preferences. I’m not sure I’d go 1x with my road bike as our local roads are very lumpy even on the “flat” bits. 15m of climbing per kilometre is normal and I can do rides with 30m/km.
IME clutch derailleurs aren’t necessary but a Narrow-Wide chainring is. I’ll often forget to engage the clutch (Shimano XT) on my MTB and it doesn’t make any difference. The one time I had to use a normal chainring I was dropping the chain every few minutes.
The argument about big jumps between gears doesn’t hold up. A single chainring usually sits between the sizes of a 2x chainset, i.e. for an MTB it’s 30T or 32T and a 2x has 36/24T. No-one moans about the jumps when in the big ring (36T) so why moan about them with a 32T where the effective jump is smaller? On road with a typical compact chainset there’s an effective 2 1/2 gears between the two chainrings, i.e. to get the same gear when changing at the front you’d have to shift 2 1/2 gears at the back. That means to go up or down just one ratio with a front shift you have to: shift the front; shift at least twice at the back. In some cases you need four shifts at the back! 2x setups are really good for just dropping a lot of range - you are on the flat and come to a steep hill, dropping to the small ring will get you most of the way there.