So far, the Quick access ribbon is a bit of a step backwards from Power widget in terms of functionality and aesthetics.

It does look a tiny bit ugly and clunky so far compared to power widget.

It takes up more space than the power widget did.

It currently shows less toggle buttons for the amount of extra space used.

The larger icons would likely be more beneficial to smaller-screened devices however, whilst also allowing a 'decent' sized picture to be shown in the Users toggle on larger-screened devices.

I think eventually, it would be best for a user to be able to customize the thickness and amount of widgets displayed in one screen without needing to slide along, perhaps even automatic scaling of the ribbon's size and thickness according to the amount of widgets shown.

Because of the new look of the ribbon compared to power widget, a few different toggle visual schemes/themes would be a great idea, perhaps even a theme that identically replicated the look of power widget, down to the the last pixel, or maybe even a 'show coloured ribbon toggles' checkbox would be a great idea.

A lot of the widget buttons themselves, at least initially, seem less intuitive, in regards to knowing whether something is actually toggled on or off or what state it is in.

The design elements need to be more uniform between different toggles.

Traditionally, the most common and intuitive way to do this has been to either change the colour, or reduce or 'shade' the colour of a toggle when in the off position.

I think tiny little badges in the corner are perhaps not the best method unless used for almost every toggle, and once again, more uniformity is needed here.

Quick settings, and inherently the ribbon's brightness toggle as well, offers inferior functionality to the power widget, as the power widget allowed directly toggling between several pre-chosen brightness modes, instead of just bringing up the brightness slider, requiring more steps, and also making it more difficult to do in outdoor high brightness conditions due to poor visibility, which could be considered one of the most common scenarios during which user's have real use for the brightness toggle anyway.

I'm sure this same functionality existed for several other toggles such as network mode, which quick settings (and therefore the ribbon) lacks.

The brightness toggle will however, be a non-issue if/when the ability to slide ones finger across the status bar to change brightness is ported over to cm10.2.

Although the ribbon has an option to link or unlink which toggles are displayed, with the actual quick settings shade, I think it would be important to have the option of separately linking/unlinking the quick setting shade's 'auto close panel' setting.

The reason for this is the way a lot of user's actually use toggles.

Quite a number of people will want the ribbon to not automatically close when toggled, which would be particularly annoying if they wanted to toggle something of/on quickly without sliding to reopen the ribbon.

An example of this is how android has a lot of connection problems with wi-fi routers for some people, and often quickly toggling wifi on and off fixes the issue.

The same can be said for data and changing mobile network modes for a lot of people.

Additionally, a lot of these same types of users merely use the actual quick settings shade as a backup toggle bar, a place for near-direct access to lesser/rarely used toggles, and these are predominantly single on/off toggles, making more sense for the quick settings shade to automatically close upon touching a toggle.

In conclusion, at least as it can be reasonably considered thus far, the Quick settings ribbon in fact neither properly replaces nor makes the Power widget redundant, and is not yet a legitimate overall improvement, rather the existence of the Power widget made the need for the quick ribbon redundant to begin with.

Having said that, the reality is that the ribbon is here and power widget is gone, so it would make sense then to at least give the ribbon every single functionality that the power widget had, otherwise one can not rightly call it an improvement.

Some food for thought: Was the removal of the start button in windows 8 an improvement? Inarguably, the answer is no, hence it's return in windows 8.1.

One can not rationally argue against the fact that the Quick settings ribbon obviously has more potential in the long run, but only if improved accordingly, as it is currently inferior to power widget.