There is no universally best gripper
It's tempting, once you've seen the strengths of one gripper family, to reach for it as a default. But just as the Robot Actuators Deep Dive course showed that actuator selection depends on matching hardware characteristics to the job, torque and speed needs, precision requirements, power constraints, gripper selection follows the same logic: it depends on properties of the object and the demands of the task, not on which gripper is generally considered most capable. A vacuum gripper that achieves very fast cycle times on flat cardboard cartons is simply the wrong tool for picking irregularly shaped cast parts, no matter how well-engineered that vacuum system is, because the object's surface geometry rules it out structurally, not because the vacuum gripper is poorly made.
The relevant object properties to weigh are the ones covered across this course: rigidity (can it tolerate a jaw squeezing it, or does it need to be picked up rather than squeezed), surface texture and porosity (can a seal form, or does the surface leak air), and fragility (does the object need a compliant material or active force sensing to avoid damage, or is it robust enough for a simple rigid grip). None of these properties can be inferred from a single dimension like size or weight alone, which is why gripper selection has to start from a specific understanding of what the object actually is and how it behaves under contact, not a general-purpose default.