Why did trunks say they were less evil than his version of the Android's?

They were made killing people all the same and only stopped when they got btfo'd by stronger fighters, if they were given reign of they'd still have done the same things.

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these android mostly spent their time on a road trip than trunk's androids that destroyed entire cities

I used to wonder this too. my headcanon theory is that present timeline Androids kicked Dr Gero's programming completely. he designed them to be killing machines and the future counterparts were just that but were non-obedient killing machines.
I'e heard someone argue once that it is because they hung around the nature-loving 16 but I don't buy that because the present Android's didn't really show mass murdering behavior from the beginning. once a mass murdering psychopath, always a mass murdering psychopath (with the exception of Vegeta)
The real reason is just timeline distortion or something stupid like that.

Didn't they spend most of their time just dicking around in the van rather than killing people? The only time there were a number of human causalities was when Vegeta was chasing 18, and even then about half of those were caused by Vegeta himself.

its cause toriyama is not a good writer.

The reason they were different was because cell came back to the past.
Also, they had the robot version of their father acting as a good influence.
If left to their own devices they might have just become super powerful random anti-heroes who would occasionally fuck stuff up but never like go as far as the androids in the future.

The androids of the future were completed but still killed gero. As a matter of fact, we have no idea what popped off when they were first released.
We know that they are objectively weaker then goku timeline androids.,

They mostly dicked around, rather than having committed mass murder. They rebelled against Gero, which meant they didn't care as much about following his orders, possibly since they were deployed earlier than expected. Basically, they managed to avoid almost all of the things that made them shits in Trunksverse.

Bad writing

They never killed anyone?

It's been a while but I think I remember 17 totally killing a guy in a clothes store for shits and giggles right before they meet Cell and Piccolo