I bevel all the time and if you set the topology up correctly at the start it is much faster the beveling by hand. For complex mechanical objects hand beveling every edge would be prohibitively time consuming.

Seriously, for most objects a single chamfer is all that is needed and it's very fast and has few issues. If you need a round then I suggest a 3-seg bevel and this will require proper topology before you bevel to minimize cleanup. I rarely have to cleanup my bevels beyond softening and hardening edges afterwards.

If you intend to smooth then go with a 2-seg bevel. This has the advantage over simply adding control edges in that the pre-smoothed object will have visible beveling and can be used in renders where as the part with just control edges will not be usable in renders.

I bevel most of the hard surface parts I make as the poly savings over smoothing is extreme. Take the simple shape below. The poly smoothed version of the 56 poly shape went to 8064 polys!

While the chamfered version (maya bevel 1-segment) went to 226 polys, the 3-segment beveled version plus the hole details is only 1106 polygons that's over 7 times fewer polys then the smoothed version without the holes. Without the hole details the beveled version has over 10 times fewer polys.