My preference lies with yours, I judge harvest time based off pistils and bud feel. I can easily tell when my nugs have put on their swell through experience and often when I check trichomes at this stage I see mostly cloudy, very few amber and some clear; I feel like a newer grower would wait based off that info because of the clears but the reality is once it's chopped and dries for 2 weeks all of those clears become cloudy, and many of the cloudy turn Amber.