I hear what you are saying.... I love the fact that Qt is using real statistics to calculate the Fees.
It is probably still worth the time and effort to always look at:
http://bitcoinexchangerate.org/feesbefore sending a transaction...
Also.. be away that the way Qt computes fees may depend your it's copy of the mempool. This means if Qt hasn't been running all day, or if it isn't fully synced, that the stats may be off.
Your are not answering my question: did Bitcoin Core 0.11.0 changed something in how Smart Fee is calculated?
Thanks for your answer.
Thank You for the rest: free info is always valuable.
I dont know the answer to your question, but your comparisson above make no sense.
Thats like saying:
Today it took me 30 minutes to get to work
Last week with my old car it only took me 15 minutes.
You share no information about the traffic situation (how many unconfirmed TX, what fees they paid, how was the situation in the block before the TX's) which is the main indicator whether the estimated fee is good or not.