BoB hasn't had much of an impact for my wife and I as we have lounge access because of the Gold Card so we just eat there and take a plastic bottle of water on board with us but we recently used RyanAir for a positioning flight on the way to Brussels and although it was cheap it never really worked out that way.
Basically I am not going to lie if you have the option of a direct route with RyanAir and you are HBO and the cost is peanuts then I will book RyanAir for short haul there is no sense paying BA if they are significantly more expensive when its only an hour or two HOWEVER.
We got stung as we never realised in the Belgium case that although they say Brussels they dont tell you that its actually a smaller airport at the opposite side of the city that needs a bus and a train to connect to. Therefore we were €25 + €10 each to get to the other airport which then evaporated any cost savings we had originally made by not booking with BA. The hidden non flight costs that are associated with RyanAir are worth considering.
In regards to the flight itself. The CC are definitely not to the same standard as BA and the cost of the onboard BoB is pretty expensive considering it's quality (Which is poor) Don't even start me on the scratchcards or that stupid fanfare they play on landing.
However they do appear to me more punctual than BA
