No projection is accurate. Cartographers generally recommend against rectangular map projections. The Mercator is better at local shapes, because it's conformal

No projection is accurate. Cartographers generally recommend against rectangular map projections. The Mercator is better at local shapes, because it's conformal, which is a not-often-mentioned advantage. Conformal maps have the property that accuracy consistently improves as you zoom in at every point. The tradeoff is that the discrepancy between regions separated by large distances can be much worse. Because the Mercator both works locally and supports loxodromic navigation it has remained popular. One alternative I like is using a conformal projection divided into hemispheres. You can get much less distortion at the cost of a single interruption. Eg: https://postimg.cc/N5nZ18CF https://postimg.cc/N5nZ18CF