For a one-off project probably not, for the larger ecosystem time's going to get spent on case design and debugging manufacturing regardless so any gains there

For a one-off project probably not, for the larger ecosystem time's going to get spent on case design and debugging manufacturing regardless so any gains there are a rounding error. That said I've seen talented designers spend weeks chasing cross-browser bugs and I knew a guy who could lay out and solder an entire mixing board over a long weekend so I'm not convinced the time savings are real.