ARMv7 has 426 distinct instructions (counting sections in the architecture reference manual). x86 does have somewhat more instruction names, but not dramatical

ARMv7 has 426 distinct instructions (counting sections in the architecture reference manual). x86 does have somewhat more instruction names, but not dramatically more (and the blowup is largely because of differences in naming conventions; Intel, for instance uses different names for [vector|scalar][single|double]float operations, whereas they are all the same name on ARM). What makes ARM nicer (and it is somewhat nicer, in my experience as someone who spends hundreds of hours writing assembly code for both architectures every year) is: 1. non-destructive operations (finally coming to Intel too!) 2. better orthogonality, fewer weird holes in the ISA (especially in the vector ops) 3. no piecemeal vector extensions (all the various extensions that may or may not be available on x86 are madness). When you really get down to it, though, none of these make a huge difference; they're just niceties.