Also meant to ask; how do those who have operated with the monitored approach system view it in comparison to operating the entire sector as PF?
Having operated the "monitored approach" system for 12 yrs I have seen just as many pitfalls with it as it has advantages, for instance, as well as introducing a handover of control from one pilot to another in the late stages of an approach, and you can view the merits of that how you like, you also have a "handover" from one AP/FD channel to the other when the switch is flicked and I've had a couple of excursions from stable flight simply due to swapping over the AP.
I've also seen several instances of the Captain/P1 taking too much advantage of being able to hand the flying to the P2 in order to manage minor pax or technical issues and by spending too much time "out of the loop" has got completely disorientated and lost situational awareness. With the other system you have to prioritise and "aviate, navigate, communicate" without allowing yourself to lose SA, in fact as soon as the other pilot takes the R/T as well as the flying, you become a passenger.
A couple of weeks ago I had a technical problem which required an expeditious return to where we'd just left and we managed to accomplish this quite efficiently without any transfer of control from one pilot to the other because it simply wasn't necessary and I didn't feel at any stage that a handover of control would have helped in any way at all.
While it may be nice sometimes to be able to delegate the flying to the other pilot when busy with other things, I would rather choose to do this only when necessary and even then with caution.
I've seen too many cock ups with the monitored approach system so I don't have a particularly high opinion of it. In fact I view it as an invitation to the unwary to get out of the loop and get overloaded simply because you've delegated the "aviate, navigate" bit of the equation to someone else and workload management is more difficult to achieve.