I run the media lab at one of Europe's must prolific art universities. The variant I tend to use most is the 3B+.

Reasons: - full sized HDMI connector - headphone connector - good bang for the buck

If I had one wish for any new product in the Raspberry line it would be: Do the Raspberry Pi 3++ or something. Same thing. Faster, but with USB-C power connector, 4K Video resolution, 2× USB-C I/O, 2× USB-A peripherals and maybe M.2 support.

Same here. The 2b, 3b and Zero 2 have the best cost-benefit ratio. I recently migrated the Oberon System 3 to those three boards and particulary the Zero is a great host for this bare-bone system: https://github.com/rochus-keller/oberonsystem3native/. I hope the Raspi company postpones the end of life date of the 3b and Zero 2.