Jordan Cain really hammered this out.
You don't have to choose between subdiv and the Bevel shader, combine them. Jordan Cain demonstrated how to get all the benefits of high-poly subdivision without relying on support loops, while still taking advantage of the Bevel shader in a single workflow, and broke down every step of the process.
Honestly, it's satisfying to see it all come together:
The original hammer model was done by Joe Wilson, who has a detailed article on Marmoset Toolbag's Bevel shader, if you want to learn how to skip the painstaking process of manually modeling beveled or rounded edges on your 3D meshes.
You can also check out Jordan Cain's article on using the Bevel shader and Vector Layer workflow for hard-surface models, where he shows how vertex color masks can help set bevel widths and simplify texturing.
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