I think the level you're casting the spell and expected CR of the enemy/party level are a big factor here. Any answer to your question is going to vary wildly based on this, due to the (poor) scaling of the 2014 version.

I would love to understand why people hate these questions so much. Direct comparisons like this are really valuable to evaluate new versions of spells.

@SeriousBri The problem with comparison questions is, that they tend to not really fit this site. The purpose of questions is not to show interesting concepts or changes between versions, it is to help people solve actual problems they are having, after failing to find out the answer themselves to the best of their ability. Just asking "What's different about X between the 2 versions" , whithout explaing what exactly you are struggling to understand or how far you have come in your research does not show any research effort and therefore ends up as not really a useful question.

@TreeSpawned I think answering this in a quantified way is actually really hard. Anybody can easily see that this is better against high hp/low Wis but how often do you have that? As the author of the 5e 2014 question, I can testify that a huge amount of research effort went into that one, and I think one would need a similar effort to estimate something like those numbers for how it works in 2024, clearly more than what you need to ask the question. That said many in the community here disagree with using averages over the spread of monsters that I'd use to make decisions like that.

Deciding what spells to pick is a very practial problem, especially at level one. Sleep used to be a no-brainer for wizards. I'd like to understand if it still is great or not. But you cannot ask "Is this spell still good?", as that is not an objective criterium; so you can ask about quantitative comparisons instead - like RCT did a while back on comparing counterspell.

@NobodytheHobgoblin Then you have to include those quantifiable arguments that you are looking for and assumptions needed to understand your problem in your question, just like that counterspell question does, a "quick analysis" section, which that question also has, would be useful as well, as that is basically what my answer boils down to. Not telling us that you already understand the basics and want very specific answers, provokes broad, answers such as mine, which simple tell you those basics.

@TreeSpawned, yes; I added some high level thoughts.

If, as noted in your edit, you already know multiple situations where it's better, what exactly are you looking for? If the old version knocked more enemies out without a save, it was better. If it didn't, the new one is better by default. That's the high-level answer (I'm summarizing your paragraph, not trying to write an actual answer here), but enumerating the many niche ways in which "guaranteed knock out of fixed HP in wide area" beats "non-guaranteed knock out in small area" isn't... interesting?

@NobodytheHobgoblin Is your question specific to a certain character level? It sounds like you want an answer for early levels, but it isn't stated outright. Perhaps your question should be "How optimal is sleep for a first level wizard", that is certainly answerable in a way the way that you want it ti be.

@TreeSpawned I am most interested in the first couple of levels where sleep used to be good, and you have very limited other mass crowd control from afar - shatter only comes in at 3rd level, and burning hands needs you to get to the front line. But as this may change level by level, I kept the question open to all levels. I debated with myself how to better position that. If it would help to focus on tier one, I could narrow it down.

@NobodytheHobgoblin Ultimately you need to ask yourself "what is the problem that I am facing that I want help with solving" and ask that, while being as specific as possible, so people understand where you stand and where you want to go to. If it is to choose spells for a potential level 1 wizard, that should be good at Crowd Control, that let us know that. If it is a Table for effectiveness of the new sleep spell by Tier of play or character level, that let us know that etc.

@SeriousBri I’m not sure where you get the idea that downvoting is hateful, and I really wish you would stop disparaging users for voting in ways you disagree with. I downvoted because I think it has little practical relevance and is not otherwise interesting. I don’t “hate” the question, but I do hate it when you have not-nice things to say about other users who don’t vote in exactly the way you think they should.

@ThomasMarkov I find them intersting (and I do think I am not the only one -- most of these questions in the end ended up with positive vote counts, and someone else thus must have found them interesting too). I understand that you don't, and you opt to downvote to experess that, and while it - quite honestly - does not feel great to get hit with an initial slew of downvotes every time, I can live with that, as long as I get some interesting answer. And I am happy to give you the $5-6 that we had this discussion before for a beer or something, but I hope you'll stick around.

@NobodytheHobgoblin While obviously could not actually retire, I’d wager it’d be at least $15, so two craft beers.

@ThomasMarkov when I don't like something, unless I feel a downvote is helpful in some way then I just pass it by. You know the old, if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything. When people vote because they dislike something even though it is reasonably well written then it's going out of your way to put someone down. That IS hateful to me. This community is often pretty toxic and yes I know the rules let people be toxic, you quote them often enough. Nobody goes through this every time. It wasn't helpful the first time and still isn't, but people still feel the need to pass their vote.