There are some semantics differences, e.g. if a remote buffer is open then `shell-command` (M-!) will run commands on the remote machine and `shell` will open a terminal which is logged in to the remote machine. I run all my terminals in Emacs, so I use these a lot (my init.el wraps the latter in a function which invents new buffer names shell-1, shell-2, etc.).

TRAMP also feels faster to me; I presume it's due to background jobs adjusting their casual I/O usage when TRAMP is detected, like writing backup/lock files, scanning directories for VCS info, etc. which has high latency on SSHFS.

I also like using `/sudo:root@localhost:/foo` for editing local files with different user permissions (plus the same command and terminal behaviour as with SSH)