Speaking to several issues at once, I agree that this lens is not a super-pro sort of thing, and lacks some features that would be nice. In particular, it is a bit hard to carry safely, and one pretty much has to cradle it, and pick it up by the foot. For hand held use I usually have the foot on top and that works fairly well, but it's not handy to carry around for any distance. It's priced competitivey with Sigma and Tamron, which is pretty unusual for Nikon. The VR is incredibly good, and it's reasonably well balanced for hand held use.
And I find it very annoying that Nikon did not add a tiny bit more metal to that foot, and make it Arca-Swiss compatible. It would have cost them essentially nothing to make the foot a little wider and mill some grooves into it.
As for the original question I find it works nicely on a D7100, and while some other camera might work better, this lens works nicely. I certainly would not hurry to upgrade before trying it. The D7100 buffer is annoying but for some things, such as distant wildlife which might need cropping even at 500, you can extend it a little by using the 1.3x crop mode.
I like mine (and the D7100) more despite than because of the Angry Photographer's opinion, but that's another matter.
