Are Prepared Statements a waste for normal queries? (PHP)

I was interested to know if using prepared statements was a waste of time if the statement was only going to be used once. I found Are Prepared Statements a waste for normal queries? (PHP) on StackOverflow and basically came away with the understanding that it’s a pretty low overhead and it’s good for security so you might as well use prepared statements all the time.

To use mysqli or PDO?

I’m trying to make my mind up about whether I should be using mysqli or PDO for a project I’m just starting and I’ve found a few relevant articles:

And based on all of that I think I’ve decided to use PDO.