You are right that the settings is not the same as the previous one. Don't worry, all who use metamask extension will have to do it again. About the password, you can use the same password if you want. As what in previous post said, setting you made and adding tokens, network and other stuff that you must add manually won't be set automatically when you import your seed phrase on metamask. Once again, seed phrase only recover your wallet and have access to your crypto and not the settings. Metamask have a feature to sync your metamask but you need the other device to scan the qr code.
Just to confirm settings and networks added in Metamask can be synced to another device only if that device has a camera lens to scan the QR code?
The feature is only available on mobile Metamask apps. It can't be done on Metamask browser extension on other devices. Anyway, right now the mobile sync feature is disabled, so you can't do it either way.
The mobile sync is disabled since a lot of people get deceived by the scammer that make use of that mobile sync.