Depends on what kind of games you'll be spending the majority of your time playing. If you buy one of these primarily for emulation you might want the face buttons there.
Best option would be for them to be modular so you can move them around as needed.
Yeah, kind of a weird opinion unless you're only playing FPS games I guess? Two sticks to move and shoulder buttons to shoot so the face button aren't as useful...
The PlayStation controller is the only one with the joysticks at the same level and the controller feels wrong because they're at the bottom position...