Run the numbers before you decide
The all-inclusive premium in Los Cabos typically runs $150–$300 per night over the same room on a room-only rate. For two people that is $75–$150 each per day of food and drink you need to consume before you break even.
A full day of eating outside a resort — breakfast $12, lunch $18, a good dinner $50, three drinks $24 — comes to about $105 per person. Add a bottle of wine and it clears $140. It is genuinely close, and it turns on how much you drink.
The days you are not there
This is what people forget. A whale watching trip, a day in Todos Santos, a fishing charter, a diving day at Cabo Pulmo — each of those is a day where you are eating two meals somewhere else and paying for them twice.
If your week has three or four full-day activities in it, the all-inclusive maths stops working almost immediately.
When the all-inclusive wins
It wins for families with teenagers, where the food volume is real and the convenience is worth money. It wins for groups who intend to sit by a pool. It wins if you drink steadily through the day, where the bar alone can justify it.
It also wins on predictability — a fixed number, no bill at every meal, no exchange rate arithmetic — and that is worth something to plenty of people even when the raw maths is marginal.
The boutique alternative
Downtown San José del Cabo has a cluster of small hotels within walking distance of the plaza and the Gallery District, typically $140–$350 a night, where you step out the door into the best restaurants in the region.
Todos Santos and the East Cape have the same model with more space and fewer people. Pedregal has villas that make sense for groups of four or more.