"Better" is entirely subjective.
I still have my old Minolta X300/X700 and lenses from the 1980's. These were cheap enough to buy as a student, were portable and had some nice sharp lenses (still going strong thanks to some micro 4/3 adapters). They didn't do face detection or any kind of AF, but they had a clever focusing screen that worked well.
Fast forward to today's SLRs and I am a bit non-plussed. Full-frame digital sensors are fantastic, but why are the cameras so huge and expensive compared to their full-frame film predecessors? I would love to find a good FF DSLR that just captured RAW photographs quickly and easily, without the myriad of settings that may or may not change my RAW output (and which behaviour is never clear from the manuals!).
Actually, quite a lot of modern cameras would be "better" if their manuals would accurately and clearly describe what the camera settings actually do...