what even do you mean by "comes at a considerable cost in what can be done"? bedrock edition behavior packs have quite a bit of functionality that java edition doesn't offer at all, including but not limited to custom blocks, items, and entities. unless you're comparing behavior packs to mods, which is an apples and oranges situation. especially bizarre when java edition has players that make both.
as for render distance, i do agree that 96 is definitely overkill (that's far enough to see the outer end islands from 0, 0), but the fact of the matter is that the increased render distance is a result of the better performance. ("better" is maybe a strong word (i won't deny be has issues sometimes), but java edition struggles to run even a render distance of 16 while bedrock edition' doesn't (unless you're on switch) in my experience)
