It's a reasonably well known tool among most 3D artist communities. It does something of everything at this point. The downside typically stated is that the UX for modelling workflow in particular is alienating, and most folks have trouble coming to grips with it. Commercial and proprietary packages often edge it out on certain features, and there is tooling path-dependency in industry work that has given Autodesk a position similar to Adobe's position with Photoshop, only with an added layer of fragmentation across products due to buy-outs of competition. Regardless, Blender does get stronger every time I see it, and it's had more and more uptake.
(What I tend to do when I need a 3D thing is to model it in Wings3D, which is also free, and then import the OBJ to Blender to do anything else.)
Blender's UX may be unconventional, but there are some really good ideas in there.
My favorite is the space bar menu. Hit space bar almost anywhere and a menu pops up. Type in a search, e.g. "cube" and it will fuzzy find "add a cube". Almost all actions are available this way.
When I have been using SketchUp, an app widely considered easy to use and approachable, I always get lost in the menus. You never know if something is behind the right click menu or the top menu bar. I'd much rather press the space bar and type in a search.
Blender's biggest issue is that it is very different from the more established 3d modelling apps. It makes migration more difficult.
I use SketchUp for woodworking plans, because it handles real world measurements and has smart snapping features. For more artistic modelling, I go with Blender.
If you like that text menu you might want to play around with RhinoCAD. You can do all of your work from a command line, so the workflow feels powerful and snappy. The drawback is that there is no fuzzy search like you mention so you need to know commands before executing them
See, I don't really agree with your comment re: workflow. At work, I see Maya artists using 3D Studio Max and artists from both those camps using Modo. They ALL struggle when switching between programs. NO program is automatically easy or comprehensible - artists have their muscle memory and changing that takes real work.
It's true that some programs have a slightly better import path into e.g.: games engines, but "slightly better" not "perfect" or amazing better than others.
(What I tend to do when I need a 3D thing is to model it in Wings3D, which is also free, and then import the OBJ to Blender to do anything else.)