Angular 2 is a rewrite of AngularJS for modern web development. It improves on AngularJS by being faster, easier to use and learn, and built on proven best practices. Some key differences include components replacing controllers, unidirectional data flow instead of two-way binding, and type-based dependency injection rather than naming. While the core concepts remain similar, the implementation in Angular 2 is cleaner. However, setting up a full Angular project can still be complicated due to dependencies on build tools and module bundling.