iPhone 14 Pro Moving to new phone - wired or wireless?

[MallardDuck]

So for all my phones so far, I've always just moved the SIM card, then done a local iTunes/finder wired restore (which also syncs all my local music and other content). I never do the actual phone setup steps until after the restore is complete.

Now with an eSIM only phone arriving on Friday, I'm wondering if I should do the phone to phone migration (and restore either from icloud backup or direct phone to phone). Anyone who has local media content (i.e. Music/Itunes - not Apple Music/Match) tried the two-step migrate? Does the icloud restore also restore app data (e.g. goodreader docs)?

Conversely, anyone done an eSIM only migration via a wired local computer backup/restore?

 

[MallardDuck]

Just in case anyone's curious, we just migrated three phones. Here's the results (all were about 250GB of content).

Wifi is .ax, and GB internet.

Phone to phone - ~ 4 hours. Unfortunately after doing so, the phone no longer was coupled to the local mac library, so when we went to sync it wired, it wiped all the media are reloaded it from the mac. Extremely annoying - and not recommended.

iCloud backup restore - ~3 hours, plus then a sync of local content. Tried wireless and it ran overnight and was only 50% done. Switched to wired and it finished in an hour. Only benefit here was that we could use the phone after about 20 minutes while the backup completed. Nice option if you total a phone without a recent local backup.

Local backup and restore - ~ 1 hour, then immediately started syncing the local content.


Net:

1) Recommendation for fastest restore is a wired local mac backup and restore, even with USB 2 speeds, especially if you have local content on a mac music/tv library. No contest fastest migration.

2) Do not try to sync local content while icloud backup is restoring. Does not work.

3) If you have local content on a mac, don't do phone to phone migration - you'll have to reload it all again.

4) Wifi sync to the mac is vastly slower than wired sync.