The element itself isn't an issue. It's that 2/3 examples on MDN are awful, you shouldn't use the meter tag as substitute for a number in a middle of sentence.

The element itself isn't an issue. It's that 2/3 examples on MDN are awful, you shouldn't use the meter tag as substitute for a number in a middle of sentence. "Heat an oven to <green progressbar>" or "He got <red almost full progressbar> on the exam". It's largely an accessibility feature, since just for displaying purpose similar effect could be achieved using one or few images and appropriate styling options. Having a dedicated tag with additional metadata, potentially allows blind readers to better understand what was meant compared to "x px wide image". Ironic that the examples of accessibility feature demonstrate usage which would make the page less accessible to most of the users.