It’s not really different but Octane require lot of GPU power and memory. I find it problematic when you want to render 10 000 pixel wide images. And since it’s unbiased, it can take a long time before clearing all noise and fireflies. And you can’t rely on cloud renderfarms for big urgent jobs. Corona is more reliable for this (unbiased and with cloud renderfarms easily accessible). But in the end, it all comes down to the artist behind the computer as you previously mentionned!!!
Oh and rendering a movie with Octane? without your own renderfarm… not really possible. That’s what turned me down because otherwise I like Octane, it’s easy to setup and produce nice results!