Wow... I just had this conversation on the phone with a racer from the R1 Forum.
Bottom line: YOU dictate what is best for you. Not a Forum, a Vendor, a Tuner, or anyone else.
That being said, lets take this to the oil. The oil is EVERYTHING in your suspension, and needs to be changed more frequently than most people do. Changing the oil is going to involve basically pulling apart all the things that would be involved in changing the cartridges or the valves.
Next thing to bring up is valve size: Bigger can be better if the valve and shim stack are controlling the flow of oil, and not the needles in the adjusters. Kind of oxymoronic, but the needles and screws can only do so much, and they have a slightly odd curve. As you close the needles off (the last few clicks in) the valves do less. So one of the advantages of the bigger valves and capacity is that we can keep us from running into this limitation.
Then we should consider the actual range of adjustment offered by the parts we can get, and what will be used. I'm not an AMA superstar or anything like that, but I get out and ride track and street and I've been known to go a little quick at times. I do this on various tracks, country roads, and mountain roads. Looking at my notes and various suspension settings, I run through a range of about 6 clicks on my forks (Race Tech equipped) and 8 to 10 clicks on my Ohlins shocks. The Ohlins have about 40 clicks and the stock adjusters in my forks have about 20. Seems like a lot, but once you get outside a given range within the valving, it really isn't working at it's best. This is because a shim stack is built to function on a curve, and at some point this curve should correspond with your springs. Outside that range no matter what the name is, it's pretty much junk if it doesn't do what you need. An Ohlins shock that has been valved for a 7.0 kg/mm spring will possibly function decent with a 10.0 kg/mm spring at some point in it's travel range, but probably not everywhere.
Well, as you can see there are many considerations and points where adjustability would be nice. When you think about the choices out there it sometimes the way to go is to spend more money and be done with. But maybe not always. Now I am in no means trying to stop anyone from paying top dollar for their parts; but if we are talking about parts that are hardly serviced or tuned, do we really need to spend a ton of cash on them because of appearance or features we won't use?
The best part for YOU is the part that you are satisfied with. If your satisfaction comes from accurate adjustability, then consider valves and springs. If you are satisfied with a great degree of adjustment etc, Consider cartridges. They offer ease of install as well. Installing valves (actually getting the valves out) can be a lot of work). If you need really great looking components with tons of features that can be tuned, look at full forks. But realize at some point that someone will need to tune or service them internally.
My opinion is that good, tunable valving and accurate springs will carry most people through what they do with their machines, and what they will service. A $10,000 set of forks will only perform as they are good or as they are serviced. If you are looking for the "set it and forget it" option when it comes to suspensions, give up. As you progress you should improve. Sooner or later you may exceed the capacity of the component. And very likely prior to that it will require service. When we accept those ideals as a norm, we'll get closer to having "the best" suspension for what we intend to do.