[m463]

vi was pretty efficient in the (terminal) era it launched in.

specifically, the keys used by vi were there on every (terminal) keyboard.

In comparison, emacs heavily depended on modifier keys, which were pretty non-standard and if found, frequently were in different places on each keyboard.

That said, more complex editing tasks using modes/automation/etc might be more efficient with emacs.

personally, I have "thresholds". quick/dirty can be vi, more involved goes to emacs. same with scripting, quick/dirty shell script, more involved to something like python. ymmv