Yup - just like sibling comment said - my "low bar" is going to be whatever the best model is that isn't unreasonably costly/expensive.
Speed of model just isn't the bottleneck for me.
Before it I used Opus 4.1, and before that Opus 4.0 and before that Sonnet 4.0 - which each have been getting slightly better. It's not like Sonnet 4.5 is some crazy step function improvement (but the speed over Opus is definitely nice)
I think Opus 4.1 is still much better than Sonnet 4.5
If cost is not considered- absolutely. That being said sonnet 4.5 and using thinking where it makes sense feels like way more bang for your buck and usually good enough. I really don't use opus anymore