I have only ever used 23 cms sparingly many years ago, that was on a multi band vertical antenna, never had many expectations of any DX contacts or anything fancy, quite hard anyway with a low power transverter and no outboard amplifier!
But I remember I could get into one local-ish repeater, (not even sure how many of those in general or even it specifically are left on air now?), and it worked good enough for reasonably local friends chats, with max distance of any of those friends contacts just under 20 miles away at the time line of sight.
I did only have 3 watts at a push output to hand from it though!
I once owned a second hand Icom low power 23 cms capable handheld, but that unless coupled to an external antenna, proved even less fruitful, other than just about reaching that one repeater that was in range!
The local "chat to" guys struggled to hear me on it, so that got quickly flogged off!
I even bought, and still have, a tri band mobile antenna made by Diamond, I had ideas of using the handheld as a "mobile" with its plug in purchased external hand mic, but gave up on that idea pretty quick also.
To be fair I was not that interested in the band, and never gave it what could be classed as a good shot.
But I do realise others have put a lot more effort and time into the band, and got very good results of course.