I would not say, "in every aspect better". One of the major themes of Lord of the Rings was that the elves are tied to nature but not really to history. They can't evolve as Men and such can, and so as history drags on they just sort of decay with entropy until eventually becoming nothing more than ghost-wraiths, voices on the wind... unless they pass into the Uttermost West, the only place protected from entropy such that elves can exist eternally there.