Should I use utf8mb4 instead utf8?

Question

What practical advantages and disadvantages does utf8mb4 provide, except ability to use Emoji? As I understand it takes more space to store.

Possible duplicate of [What is the difference between utf8mb4 and utf8 charsets in mysql?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30074492/what-is-the-difference-between-utf8mb4-and-utf8-charsets-in-mysql) — greg-449, Jun 10 '16 at 08:59
Is a good answer, but I believe there is more niceties using utf8mb4 and it would be good to have them in one place. I have read somewhere here that comparing utf8mb4 and utf8 in MySQL will take much more time. — ProgZi, Jun 10 '16 at 12:42

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 24 '16 at 16:55

utf8mb4 handles Emoji and some Chinese characters that are missing from utf8. There are other, less common, characters. Read about the Unicode planes, realizing that the BMP is the only plane handled by MySQL's utf8.

As for space... For characters that exist in utf8, utf8mb4 takes the same amount of space.

Should I use utf8mb4 instead utf8?

1 Answers1