It’s the use of grids not the use of minis that is different. Yes minis have been around for decades but up until 3e they were only used for rough estimation of positioning in combat not for tactical 5’x5′ skirmish wargaming. The rules didn’t require specific knowledge of every square, just who was in melee, who was in the room, etc. Cynically I would say that 4e was an attempt to replicate the exploitive sales practices of Games Workshop and turn DnD into a tactical wargame to sell as many minis as possible, hence minions.

I love painting minis, it’s during this process that I build my characters backstory, but I loathe tactical wargaming in my RPG.

If all minis cost $0, and I could paint them well in a short period of time, I’d absolutely always use minis.

The biggest problem I find with them is that if you are already using minis, it’s hard to introduce the content you’d like to play — specific or custom monsters, the exact heraldry of your PC, the posture of the antagonist that you spend so much time describing, without having a good mini to go with it. By using minis you’re locking yourself in to using what minis you can find. It’s limiting on both the gm’s ability to design good scenes and the players’ ability to visualize good scenes.

I prefer tokens because it’s just paper, a 30 second – 10 minute drawing and a few seconds to laminate, and i’m not limited by my wallet.

5e makes specific distances pretty important so if you’re doing a combat where you actually track the numbers you need to use something rather than nothing: tokens is a good compromise because the drawings are only in your face when you’re making decisions and it’s practically theater of the mind otherwise.