That kind of depends on what you have for coolers already. I already had a Corsair closed loop all in one liquid cooler and the only thing I needed to get it to work with Ryzen was a $4.99 bracket. I actually saved $30 by getting the R5 1600 rather than the 1600X. I used the included cooler for a few days while I waited for the bracket to come in and its an "OK" cooler. But my Corsair is dramatically better. Or if you were looking to go liquid anyway, the new ones now come with the bracket required for Ryzen. In my case I already had it and was planning to use it so the fact that the 1600 came with a cooler was only a factor because I could go ahead and build the system while I waited for the bracket.
With the cooler that came with the 1600 I got it to 3.6 (want willing to up the voltage at that point) but now with the corsair, I've got it at 3.8 @ 1.35v.
Better looking? That's another "to each his own" matter. My system is a plain black box so I don't particularly care what the MB looks like
Quite possibly. It's been a long time since Intel had any real competition.