I think the "but it's easier to visualize" claim is BS.

I would argue that it's just as hard for a person who's is used to the metric system to visualize inches, feet and yards as it is for a person used to those units to visualize centimeters and meters.

It's all a matter of which units your brain is used to thinking in.

When I speak to my US friends and they say stuff like, "I'm 7 feet and 10 inches tall", I have no internal visual metal picture at all. But if I say, "I'm 193 cm tall" I would guess they don't have either.