It makes the experience in this regard not much different from any apt-get based linux distribution. The old way of having to compile everything makes your system very configurable, but it gets brittle on systems where you have to make big upgrades.
The problem with binary packages on freebsd was that they are frozen at release. So when you use the package manager to install everything you need... then a large package has a security hole (or it already has a hole.. since the packages might be months out of date), and the only way to patch it is by using the ports.
THe only thing packages on freebsd are good for is getting up and running. You'll save a bit of time if you install the packages.. but you have to use ports to upgrade and maintain those packages.
I used it from 3.4-8.. nice to see that they addressed my problem with the new package manager.
The new pkg uses the up-to-date repository by default. It has fixed all this mess, and turned binary packages from something very clunky that nobody really used to something fairly solid that can be used in production. The only reason I use ports nowadays is when I need to set custom build options on a package.