They're the same. The BE of BECMI is identical to B/X, intentionally so, as some passages are lifted word-for-word. There are a few minor changes - BECMI smoothens out the Cleric and Magic-Users' spell progressions, and stretches out the Thieves' Skill progression over 36 levels. The Thief skill progression is the only flaw, as it lowers the class's chance of success per level, but there are many solutions to this problem online, not the least of which is simply to go back to the old progression system.
Mentzer Basic and Expert were also written as tutorials for absolute novices who may have never even heard of role playing games before. This was intentional, as the BECMI sets were TSR's forays into the international market. As such, Mentzer Basic includes a solo tutorial adventure and a group tutorial dungeon spread out over two books, instead of Moldvay Basic which only has a sample dungeon and a short example of play. For modern, experienced gamers, the tutorials are considered unnecessary.
The 1981 Basic set came with both Moldvay's Basic rulebook and an adventure, B2 Keep on the Borderlands. This clear separation of rules and adventure made referencing the rules much easier. The 1983 set came with a Player's Book and DM book, both which had tutorials and rules split between them, which made them more difficult to reference.
The BECMI Expert book contains additional content over B/X Expert in the section for Dungeon Masters. B/X presents a map of Karameikos and the Known World as a sample wilderness, BECMI presents a sample town called "Threshold" with a light amount of detail, and some quest hooks around it.
What BECMI adds over B/X is extra content for higher levels, the CMI books. The Companion book, in particular, adds rules for stronghold construction, management, and mass warfare; making it unique. To get a similar situation in OD&D you would have to incorporate the Chainmail Mass Combat rules, which were originally meant as a tabletop miniatures wargame anyway, or AD&D 2e's Battlesystem, which is an awful approximation of it. The Companion set's stronghold rules also let you play out a small Sims-like domain management game, if you'd like.
The Master and Immortal sets add in high level artifacts, weapon specializations, the quests for Immortality, and the whole new Immortals system of combat and magic. Most players and groups are obsessed with dungeon crawling and fighting larger enemies, and throw out the late game content of BECMI, and I think that's a shame, because the value I see in the Master and Immortal sets is that they provide new and unique gameplay additions that keep the game from going stale. Modern D&D has no such content, and simply adds more powers and more class features for players to attain as they gain increasing numbers of levels, and I really think that limits the scope of the game.
B/X is generally praised for the conciseness of its text and its ability to convey all the information of the game with the brevity of its language. BECMI uses longer form explanations and more advice and guidance on how to play the game. For this reason there is an impression that the Mentzer books talk down to the reader, while the Moldvay, Cook and Marsh books use more adult language. Personally, I've never had an issue with it. I'm still struggling to figure out what the hell Gary Gygax is trying to convey in the OD&D and AD&D books.
A complaint I've seen online is that it is hard to find rules in Mentzer BE due to its tutorial nature. While the rules of the game are introduced slowly in the tutorial, they are all collected and presented as a reference at the end of the book. The organization and wording is identical to Moldvay Basic, as I've mentioned before, so I don't understand this complaint. The Marsh and Cook Expert book, in particular, has terrible organization and the Mentzer Expert book doesn't change any of it, but just uses more words in the descriptions.
The appeal of B/X is in the brevity of the text and the limited scope of the gameplay that covers only what OD&D did, with its focus on Underworld and Wilderness Adventures. With the OS Essentials book out, which takes the content of the B/X levels and reorganizes them into something better referenced for play, its become the dominant game books for OSR type D&D.
The BECMI books go far beyond, delivering on the promises of OD&D by including domain level play, more integration with the Known World campaign setting, and rules for deity-tier Immortals play that doesn't devolve into killing Odin for his magic spear.
As an aside, some people prefer the amateurish art of the B/X books, as they feel it more accurately represents the gritty, high risk dungeon crawling style of early D&D play, and dislike the more professional, high fantasy art of the BECMI sets.
In the end it comes down to personal preference. Some players prefer to reference B/X as a slim set of volumes to keep on hand for game sessions, while others prefer the longer form tutorials and explanations of BECMI as a way to learn the game. Mechanically, there is no real difference, in fact you can see BECMI as merely as an incorporation of errata and an update to the B/X rules.
A point worth mentioning, and something really negative about BECMI was the politics surrounding its creation. As part of the ongoing lawsuit between Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, TSR attempted to remove everything copyrightable from D&D and keep it in AD&D, which is why a lot of the special races like Drow don't appear, and the names of magic spells such as "Tenser's Floating Disk" were renamed to just "Floating Disk". Frank Mentzer seems like he didn't want to be caught in the middle, and credited both the creators of D&D in his publications. The BECMI sets were also created to be TSR's international products, which explains the shift in tone and language of the rulebooks.
B/X and BECMI are so similar, and they're in continuity with Original D&D "0 edition" in a way that the two editions of AD&D are not, that the choice of which to play and purchase really is a matter of personal preference. Most old school fans of D&D tend to stick with whichever they got first.
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