I was a big user of Angular before React came along. I really enjoyed it at the time, but managing the syncing of scope objects between directives was always a massive pain point. React's component model was such a welcome change for me, in this regard.
In terms of what I'd recommend for beginners, I'm not sure. When I was new to programming, I actually struggled when frameworks were too large, with too many concepts to learn. If I had to teach someone front-end dev for the first time, I'd probably stick with React which has a much simpler mental model in comparison.