In the UK we normally see side-by-side comparison laps between the pole-sitter and the second placed guy (so both Mercedes most of the time), usually before the race.
I grant you that it's hard to gain any real knowledge from everyone qualifying at once, but then I found the single-lap qualifying format overly flat (other than that awesome session at Magny-Cours, but I think that was it).
I didn't mind the elimination qualifying as such, but the implementation of it was very poor. With some tweaking it could have worked, but it was rushed in with no prior thought about how a session would unfold. The major (unsolvable) problem was that a top team didn't need to do a flat-out lap to progress, so the one thing Bernie was trying to get (a top car near the back) would never happen as the likes of Mercedes didn't need to try 100% to progress through the first two sessions. It was always more likely to eliminate potential challengers to Mercedes and Ferrari, like Williams, and thus do exactly the opposite to what they were trying to do.