[motbob]

For chunked encoding and distribution on a massive scale (Netflix/Youtube), AV1 is the clear choice today.

For making encodes for personal use, HEVC/x265 is the clear choice today, and it probably will be for a long time.

If you want to use AV1/libaom and see significant efficiency gains over HEVC/x265, you will have to allocate a lot more encoding time. There's no way around that. You will also not be able to make use of multithreading to a significant degree, for libaom at least (I have not seriously tested other encoders). There are third-party programs in active development that perform chunked AV1 encoding for the purpose of utilizing all your cores.

aom --cpu-used=5 is currently strictly better than x265 --preset veryslow, putting aside the threading issue. Beats it in encoding time and efficiency. But it's an unfair comparison.

[aikinai]

Super helpful reply and tells me exactly what I needed to know (I'll stick with HEVC). Thanks!