Supercharges react-native development. And, with custom builds, you get all of this power with almost zero downside compared to developing bare react-native. Plus, EAS makes building and submitting to the App Store super simple.
The Expo library has uplifted the DX of building the React-Native application. It's not a toy project anymore. The expo community is doing a fantastic job by continuously improving the OG Expo SDK and all the tooling that it provides. I've been using it since 2020 and it's come a long long way. Also, a long to go as well.
Expo is wonderful; it's the complete opposite of vendor lock-in.
You can add the package to your bare workflow, you can build locally, you can set up your own update server... Expo is a blessing!