Then XYplorer [1] offered a pro license freebee (looks like back in 2019 [2]) and I gave it a try. I'm still using that same version (15.90) from so many years ago. Never looked back.
I could not find any in depth comparison with Directory Opus. These two have accumulated so much features over the years, it became a kind of expertise to know them in detail.
The chance of a dual-expert willing to clearly expand on his experience is small. I wish more tech journalism was on this level. Instead, the verge had (at least) 4 articles in 2022 on windows explorer getting... tabs.
It doesn’t support dual tree + dual pane (so two explorer trees location synced to their respective pane), by far my favorite DO view.
Locked folders allowing changes. I have some frequently used folders as tabs, and set them to "locked, allow changes", which makes it, so they behave like normal tabs, but once I switch tabs, they revert to their base directory again.
And to this day it's still written in VB6. :-)