This is official HGC — Human Generated Content. No AI was used in the creation of this article. Respect the human, not the slop.
Who's Zed? Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead. — Butch and Fabienne — Pulp Fiction
Luckily for us, Zed is definitely not dead. Zed is alive and well and seems to be thriving.
The trusted Code Editor is at the centre of any developer's workflow. Some obsess over it like a frenzied DJ constantly twiddling knobs whilst others simply use the default settings with whatever editor seems to be most popular within the community.
My latest IDE of choice has been Cursor, which has been great, especially with their AI integration. It's been the smoothest experience when it comes to getting into a flow with an AI assistant.
However, the Editor Zed kept popping up online. Syntax did a review recently and Code to the moon also did a video on it recently. I read the comments on this video and knew I had to give it a try.
The best part of zed is that ultra fast and efficient, it almost eats no ram
The best feature of Zed is the possibility of disable AI out of the box.
Love Zed, I use it for pretty much everything now it's so simple, uncomplicated, uncluttered and it feels really nice to use.
The Good
Damn It's Fast
It's fast! Blazingly fast. The editor is built in Rust from the ground up apparently and it shows. Whereas Vscode is built on top of Electron, Zed decided to built from the ground up in Rust (originally they started with Electron but because of performance they shifted over to Rust).
Zed has some experienced names behind it. Nathan Sobo was the guy who helped make the Atom editor back in the day (When it was actually popular). Then there is Antonio Scandurra and Max Brunsfeld.
Easy to setup.
Setup was easy. It asked what settings to import. I chose Cursor settings and away we went. Most of the keymappings were the same (I'll get into that in the next section a bit more) and it was fairly easy to configure.
Whenever I opened a file type it didn't have the syntax highlighting for, a notification popped up asking if I wanted to install the Language Server for that file type. I did. It was quick. They have pretty much every language you would need.
It's Got Vim Mode
Oh yeah! I was very happy about this.
This was one of the main drivers for me to try out Zed. Knowing I would be able to use an editor setup for Vim mode filled my heart with joy. I am a big fan of Vim motions as you can read about here. I wouldn't go back to navigating around code the traditional way. Vim is just too good.
Zed have done a great job with their "Vim mode" and it feels really smooth.
There is a "Default Vim Bindings" file which enables you to add any custom vim motions you may want. It's nice.
It Has AI Chat
It has AI chat in the side panel just like in Cursor. The setup with the models and the pricing is a bit different to Cursor though. As of the writing of this article they have three plans:
I chose the "Personal" and then signed up for Claude Code. I now have "Sonnet" as my main model in the AI chat. It all works as expected.
I was a bit wary of the "Pro" plan because they state "$5 of tokens included" and then you go to "usage based billing". This scares me. Will I be using AI happily all month and then end up with a massive bill because I went well beyond the $5 prepaid amount? Will I get notified before hand?
As I was unsure I chose to subscribe to Claude Code. I wanted to try it for a while anyway and this seemed like a good opportunity. It was easy to set up and seems to be working fine. The only thing is I am now very limited in the models I can choose from in the AI chat. Sonnet or Haiku. Nothing else. Cursor is much better on this front.
I am probably not doing this the "right way" but still — Sonnet is a good model so happy with that for now.
Real Time Collaborative Editing
I didn't try this one but it's definitely one of their selling points and supposedly well implemented. I can't see me using this all that often. First, I don't do that many joint coding sessions and second, it relies on the other person/s also having Zed.
If a team dictates you have to use Zed and you find value from real time collaboration then this seems like a great choice. But I am skeptical if this is really such a valuable feature for the average developer.
The Not So Good
The "tab" AI Feature
The "tab" AI feature is really not that great. Nowhere near as good as in Cursor. I have realised that I really utilise this feature in Cursor. I am still to work out if this is a deal breaker for me. It's definitely something I am considering.
Currently it comes up first with some "preview" dialog:
but if I press tab it disappears and if I press alt nothing happens. Then sometimes the tab feature will popup and work as expected and all good but sometimes it doesn't.
I don't get this honestly. This seems like such an important feature that developers have shown they love. Get this right! This can be a make or break feature.
Extension Ecosystem
To be honest, in this day and age with the editors we have available you don't need that many extensions. But one extension I truly love is Turbo Console log. I use this all the time when coding. Even with all the latest AI at our fingertips, the good old console.log is still so useful for debugging.
Unfortunately it looks like Zed doesn't have this extension or anything similar. I could probably build something that would do the job but it's things like this that you get so used to that can really frustrate you when trying out a new editor.
Pricing
This is an issue it seems with all the editors out there offering AI options. Cursor had a whole saga about it. However, as a consumer of a product like this I want to know if I pay a certain price every month that I won't go over that.
I don't think I am overly dependent on AI but I do use it daily. 80% of the time I am using the "tab" feature when coding. The other 20% I am using AI to write out boiler plate code or write tests etc. I don't want a surprise bill at the end of the month.
Conclusion
Zed's big selling point for me is it's speed. It is fast. Noticeably fast compared to editors even like VSCode and Cursor. It has Vim Mode and it also has real time collaboration (not sure many people want this though).
Is this worth it then to swap over?
At the moment, for me the answer is "no". The biggest pain point for me was the AI usage. The "tab" feature and the "AI Agent Chat" feature were just not as slick as in Cursor.
I have realised now that this is a big deal for me. I have grown accustomed to the way it's been implemented in Cursor and I think they have got it right. Hence it's popularity. It also shows me that success of generative AI in a product is very much based on it's implementation.
I will continue to use Zed for certain projects as I genuinely enjoyed coding in it. The Vim Mode is beautiful. However, the world of Software has changed over the past few years and code editors need to make sure their products have the most important features working really well.
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