I still use ActiveRecord a lot (Rails) and I would not write SQL queries manually since the ORM works so well. But I used ORMs in other languages and they were

I still use ActiveRecord a lot (Rails) and I would not write SQL queries manually since the ORM works so well. But I used ORMs in other languages and they were not as convenient so maybe it depends on the ORM itself. The time it saves compared to standard queries is massive. ORM haters would likely point out that complicated queries are hard to write with an ORM but these complicated queries are not a massive part of the work and can still be abstracted away in a method using SQL if needed. Another good point of the ORM: validation of data. There are plenty of validation you cannot enforce in SQL (regex, postcode...).