As far as this week's episode goes, it's was freaking awesome. I enjoyed the fighting and Zeno's insta-analysis. Good thing Kurapica didn't get to go in there and die.
The two series are nearly equivalent. Specifically, some things are more exciting in the original, some things are more exciting in this version. I'd give the edge to the original series for the handful of filler episodes they had that were excellent to the point that you don't recognize that they're filler unless you've read the manga. However the superior animation in the second series is not to be ignored. Basically, if you're not a die hard fan, there's no reason to watch anything you've seen before up to this point. That may change in the future, but probably not.