Have played with my mates one now. I have the iPhone X. It does seem quite a bit bigger... he moved from iPhone 7 and is very happy with it, for me personally, I just don't like big phones, so not for me. The auto-brightness seems to be so much brighter too, especially in a dimly lit bar, it hurt my eyes! Bezels, to be honest didn't annoy me as much as I thought in real life. The colours are nice, don't 'pop' as much as I would like, but definitely nice to have the option.
Ultimately I would go for the iPhone XS, but if you're upgrading from 6/7/8 you'd be perfectly happy with the XR I think (if you don't mind bigger phones)