well when I started I had the same question and the answer i received from my senior colleagues at the time was that whichever editor you start with and get used to, that is the best editor for you. I just prefer emacs because I got used to it. if you want the list of features here is what wikipedia has to say:
XEmacs text-editing features commands to manipulate words and paragraphs (deleting them, moving them, moving through them, and so forth), syntax highlighting for making source code easier to read, and "keyboard macros" for performing arbitrary batches of editing commands defined by the user.
XEmacs has comprehensive online help, as well as five manuals available from the XEmacs website. XEmacs supports many human languages as well as editing-modes for many programming and markup-languages. XEmacs runs on many operating systems including Unix/Linux, BSDs and Mac OS X. Running on Mac OS requires X11; while development has started on a native Carbon version. Two versions of XEmacs for the Microsoft Windows environment exist: a native installer and a Cygwin package.
Users can reconfigure almost all of the functionality in the editor by using the Emacs Lisp language. Changes to the Lisp code do not require the user to restart or recompile the editor. Programmers have made available many pre-written Lisp extensions.
Many packages exist to extend and supplement the capabilities of XEmacs. Users can apply them in bulk using the xemacs-sumo package or "sumo tarballs"