I still prefer flat bars for most riding. OK, if you want to race or do long road rides, maybe there is an advantage in drops. Touring though, I still prefer flats, with the terribly non-U bar ends of the 90s. Comfortable, lots of different positions, and OK the aerodynamics is poor. Well, it will be if you carry panniers. Meanwhile on the average Alpine tour, knocking off 60-100km in a day or so, depending on terrain, they are great.That's what I found when I had a dropped bar gravel bike. While it could be ridden on reasonably rough stuff, you wouldn't necessarily want to. So for me that meant it was mainly useful for routes that had some proper off-road stuff that was useful in linking tarmac and/or towpath type stuff. I didn't do enough of those routes to make it worthwhile so ended up getting rid. I've set-up my Cotic Roadrat as a flat barred gravel bike and that's a lot better off-road than the drop-bar bike was, and it's pretty fast on gentle off-road stuff (although still not as fast as a proper lightweight XC MTB).
I know what you mean. The thing is I don't know what makes up a CX bike. The manufacturers don't either, when they briefly tried to get us all into CX bikes a few years ago, because we already had a MTB, and a hybrid, and a road bike, and there must be another segment, let's sell CX bikes. So they made alleged CX bikes with all sorts. Luggage mounts for Heaven's sake. Oh yes, because all the CX racers running round a muddy park in Bracknell in November have panniers, don't they? It obviously didn't have anything to do with the fact that they had the plans for old fashioned tourers floating about, and they looked about right with soft head angles and easy geometry. The other thing is that who on earth these days goes CX racing? Back in the 70's, maybe, or the odd Belgian these days, but it's a masochistic sport with all the glamour of, well, cycling and running through muddy puddles in a park in Bracknell. In November. So nobody bought CX bikes. Then they came up with the gravel bike, whatever that is, and thank Christ people actually decided they wanted one.I've never had a full-on CX bike though, so that's an itch I do fancy scratching at some point.
Very occasionally I see a CX bike out on the moors, generally being carried to the next farm track. I want to like it, but it doesn't look like fun to me. The closest I have got is fitting CX tyres to my bitsa hybrid single speed that I use to zip down the towpath and visit pals.