Which type of page to use for a customized front page in Drupal 7? I am watching the following tutorial on panels. The author is creating a content type for 'Home page', and later, a node view variant of node templates. He mentions that he is not 100% about this way of proceeding, but he is used to it.

The more I learn about this subject and the more I try to replicate this approach, the less I am convinced by it. Creating a content type for a home page seems like an heresy.

The panels dashboard offers to create panel pages, but also landing pages. It seems to me like a landing page would be enough (after setting it as the default front page), but would a panel page offer more benefit in this case?
I always tend to use the Context module.  Just set up a front page context that doesn't load all the unnecessary items (blocks, breadcrumbs or whatever) then have any node/panel you fancy as a home page without all the extra items that you don't need rendered onto the page.  It does seem slightly overkill to have an entire content type dedicated to one node though, I agree with that.