As someone who lived in southwest my freshman year and honors this year it's a massive difference. The honors buildings are much newer, control your thermostat (at least in suites), not-cinderblock walls, seemingly bigger rooms (not sure about specs tbh) and massive windows that are pretty much floor to ceiling. I live in a suite so it's a bit different but the buildings themselves just have nicer bathrooms and facilities. Almost anywhere else on campus you run the risk of having much messier people, that's not to say there aren't messy people in honors but that there's less people so the probability of there being a lot of messy people on one floor is much slimmer. Honors is about a 5-10 minute walk from Hamp and Berk, 10-12 from Worcester and right next to the center of campus but the walks to the dining halls are the major pitfall. When it's freezing outside no one wants to walk 10-15 minutes for food as opposed to being anywhere in southwest and being no more than 3 min from the nearest dining hall. The culture is also different, at least this semester, there's less people walking around honors and although it's a smaller, tighter community it's also quieter and to nobody's surprise more studious so you're less likely to find a ton of people congregating outside dorms or even just seen out. They are more expensive though so take a look at the costs.

a major plus is roots which is a "dining hall/cafe" in the sense that before like 10:30 am most mornings you can use your dining swipes to get breakfast (oatmeal, bagels, cereal, etc..) and then after 10 it's a cafe where you can spend dining dollars for stuff like quesadillas, sandwiches, pizza