Thanks for taking the time to file a bug report!

> I thought I was on a website like gmail or similar.
Old settings looked similar to less-good websites, so I'll count this as a win! As we continue updating Chrome to Material Design, the new Settings page will share a consistent style with Downloads, History, Extensions, Bookmarks, etc. Hopefully that will make it clear this is not just another website, though I do understand that there is an initial confusion. We are working on initial messaging to explain the change:  Issue 598017 

> The design is so flat I found it hard to have my eyes lead to headlines and areas of interest.
The old settings was even more flat -- at least we have cards! But more seriously, we've designed the page to make it easier to scan than before, and from early usage that appears to be the case.

> I found it hard to find advanced or development / experimental features.
We haven't reorganized/buried anything in the Settings page. Advanced was always a bit tricky to get to (scroll to bottom, click link), but we haven't changed that and in fact have also added a way to get there through the sidenav (click on the hamburger button in the top-left)

> I find the single, long scrolling page inefficient.
This is both a problem with the old settings page, and also unfortunately a hard thing to fix when you're dealing with a *very* long list of settings.

> There is a lot of wasted screen real estate (see attached screenshot).
The old settings page also wasted a lot of screen real estate, and few users have screens as large as yours. However, we are looking into ways to make the additional space more useful (eg. sidenav).

> I cannot find any way to sync my settings locally to a file on disk / shared drive or services other than google login.
This is not a feature of the old settings page, and we are trying to stay as consistent as possible in our initial release. If you'd like it, please file a separate bug at crbug.com/new or through the Chrome menu: "Help > Report an issue..."