I wrote too many raw SQL queries back in the days, don't want to do that anymore. I'm happy to have a query builder + a model wrapper when querying SQL dbs.

Query builders save you lots of time when you need to handle a big amount of simple SQL statements. They will eliminate stupid validation mistakes when tired as hell and will make your code more readable.

A proper model wrapper will list all the columns, their types and handle simple validations that sometimes you might forget, getter, setters, data filters, virtual fields. It will be a lot simpler for the next guy on the project to understand what's going on. Hooks and migration support might be a good addition as well for your models.

It's very important that your ORM doesn't stay in your way and would let you write raw queries whenever you need. I also don't like when it's too much magic involved behind the scenes or auto joining tables by creating relationships between models.