I’m partial to Blender, personally, since I’ve been using it for several years now as I teach myself 3D modeling. I’ve mucked around with 3DS Max a bit recently in an attempt to get a bit of a head start on learning it before I take 3D modeling and animation classes at my local community college this fall, and jeez, it’s convoluted compared to Blender. The first thing I noticed is that there are basic and essential modeling and modifier operations that take 2 steps in Blender, but take 5 or more in Max, and are given somewhat un-intuitive names. That’s probably ticked me off the most, along with trying to find tools and functions that are buried several menus deep in Max, but are right there on the surface in Blender.
Yeah, sure I’ve already run across things that Max does better, or that Blender can’t do nearly at all, but I don’t remember feeling like I was banging my head against a wall for nearly so much of the time when I was learning Blender as I do now, learning by way around Max.