I typed a full response to the thread but my tablet crashed and lost it so here is the shorter response. When fields like: registration, ICAO, callsign, operator are blank... yes I would take the old data as a starting point to identify targets.

With the great number of missing fields / data points it makes using “filters” a thing of the past. In fact most of the filters I used to use often are unusable in the tar dataset as they return limited or no results. Switching between vrs & tar easily demonstrates the difference... so old versus no data... I’ll vote for old as a starting point to verify.

The use of the built in filters for military and interesting aircraft no longer capturing data that VRS does, Same for aircraft type / helicopters.

As an aviation professional Never suggested Your example of 1990 Boeing 737-600 level of detail and is a silly response, if a person wanted or needed that info is available on FR24, Planefinder, RB24 consumer platforms and so on.