I’m actually glad that you allowed yourself to let the first reactions subside, found a way to customize system to your liking, and gave MIUI another chance. I’ve heard MIUI users everywhere say ‘shit MIUI,’ but it seems to my luck that I’ve never been able to understand why. Though, as soon as I got my Poco, I immediately flashed Xiaomi eu ROM (which is essentially the original Chinese MIUI version with all the its features but with ads removed), and I’m really satisfied. MIUI is feature-rich, and to have some of those on some other Android/ROM, you’d need to install additional apps.
With this tool, I uninstalled about 40 apps and disabled around 10 (in settings you can choose to uninstall or disable).
And if you’re rooted or have Shizuku, there are other methods to do this directly from the phone. For example, AppManager is my favorite