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It all depends what kind of photography you do. Architectural photographers would never use a ball head, as you can’t make fine adjustments easily. They need to make adjustments much less than 1 degree in every direction. They use geared heads. Forget about shooting birds with that, though. 🙂
In my mind, there are two types of heads: ball heads (including grip action) and pan/tilt (including gear heads). The ball heads are fast to adjust, whereas the pan/tilt tend to be more precise. As a real estate photographer I use a 3-way pan/tilt head. (I can’t quite seem to justify buying a 400$+ geared head…) When I go outside to take nature pictures I wish I had a ball-type head.
You might also want to take a look at James’ recent post: https://www.lenspiration.com/2017/07/how-i-bought-a-new-tripod-head-and-why-i-returned-it/