Which array method should you use?

Pick by what you want back.

const active = users.filter((u) => u.active);
const names = active.map((u) => u.name);
const total = orders.reduce((sum, o) => sum + o.price, 0);
const admin = users.find((u) => u.role === "admin");

Use the method that states the intent

filter().map() reads as "keep these, then transform" — a for loop with a conditional push does the same thing but the reader has to infer it. Chaining creates an intermediate array, which is irrelevant for normal sizes and only worth avoiding for very large ones.

Two things forEach cannot do

It ignores await, so the surrounding code continues before the work finishes:

items.forEach(async (x) => await save(x));   // does not wait
for (const x of items) await save(x);        // sequential
await Promise.all(items.map(save));          // parallel

And you cannot break out of it — return only skips the current item. Use for...of, or some/find when the goal is early exit.

Mutating vs copying

sort and reverse change the array in place, which surprises callers. Their copying versions toSorted and toReversed avoid that:

const sorted = [...items].sort(byName);   // older pattern
const sorted = items.toSorted(byName);    // modern

One detail

Array methods skip holes in sparse arrays, while for...of visits them as undefined — rarely relevant, but it explains occasional surprising results.