Just curious. But was watching a video from Professor DM on Youtube about zones and wondered if anyone has experience with this instead of grids and how it works. On a campaign I am in we used zones on one encounter and it worked well for that situation, but it also brought up questions on how it works if you used it all the time. The game seems designed for minis and grid, and not so much for zone/theater of the mind. 

So how do you handle things like rogue sneak attack? if you are in the zone do you always get a sneak attack? if you are not in the zone, but can use ranged do you get sneak attack if an ally is in the other zone? Or feats like Sentinel or Polearm Master. How do those trigger OA or reducing movement to zero if anyone who is in a zone can attack anyone else who is in that zone.

Let me preface this with "I really like grids (but prefer hex grids, higher accuracy,  creativity, and realism)"

The "Zone" idea is basically a Theater of the Mind Game with figures so it looks pretty.

Basically with a zone the DM is making up his own mind about tactics, rather than allowing the players to do it.  Yes, this slows down the play, as that video talks about.  But it is not slowing down the game, it IS the game.

Yes, zone play is simpler.  Hence the problems you mentioned about sneak attack.       Basically, the Zone idea is FAST gaming, without any player strategy.   DM calls on everything - can I sneak Attack,  how many people can I fireball - do I have to get the fighter or can I put him just out of the area?

He is skipping all that strategy, because he does not like it.  I do.  And from your question, I think you do too.

If you want to do the sneak attack as something other than a purely DM decision, screw the Zone, play the grid.

Yeah this is a player preference thing. I enjoy making tactical choices in combat, and when I've played TotM I've really missed being able to make most of those choices. The battle felt very different from what I was used to - much more like the DM narrating everything with us filling in the blanks here and there. That's not to say I'm a combat junkie. We didn't fight a thing in my session last night. But when I do fight I like to have a bit more agency. It's a lot harder in TotM to do anything the DM wasn't expecting or didn't think of ahead of time.

But on the other hand, I can see the appeal. Combats are just another story beat and TotM keeps them from bogging the game down if tactics aren't your thing. That's the strength of D&D - you can focus on what you want.