Orichalcum Drill

The drill digs faster on paper, but it ignores every mining speed bonus in the game. The moment you are wearing a mining set, drinking a mining potion or holding an Ancient Chisel, the pickaxe pulls ahead and stays ahead. If you never bother with any of that, the drill wins by default.

Reach is the other difference. The drill is shorter, so hellevators and long tunnels mean repositioning more often, and precision work suffers because the beam chews continuously rather than in discrete swings. Removing exactly one block without touching its neighbors is much harder with a drill in hand.

Modifiers only touch its damage and knockback, never how fast it digs, so do not spend serious money reforging a tool you are buying for mining. Take whatever damage roll shows up cheaply and move on. If you genuinely intend to swing it at enemies you have picked the wrong weapon anyway.