No, you are comparing the same fruit.

But on different purposes it can fulfill.

As one of the very first people who started the reading of NCE in this forum for accent correction, I realized it was not a very wise choice to use the text just a couple of weeks later. Some people had also kindly reminded us of the impractical side of this textbook soon after that. But I still finished Book II, non-stop, knowing it's inefficiency but being not able to immediately find something better to replace it.

The problem to me is: NCE is not very good (for my personal purposes), but there hardly exist any other textbooks that are systematic and practical enough for improving all aspects of our English language skills.