Depends on your perspective; there were two options on offer the VK3001H and the VK3002 MAN, which evolved into the Panther. I'm partial to the VK3002 with its original 60mm armor and lower weight than the Panther, but that with the Schamturm and without the interweaved road wheels.
The VK3001H had the benefit of being ready sooner and being an evolutionary design, not a revolutionary one like the Panther , but the downside of not having the improved armor, wider tracks, and variety of buffs learned from the T-34. It was a bigger Pz IV effectively, kind of like the M4 Sherman in terms of weight and size minus the sloped armor, but with the interweaved road wheels. With a turret ring widening and weight increase it could have taken the Panther's long 75mm gun and probably entered production with that in 1942. It had the advantage of not having the reliability problems the Panther, while being able to mount its gun, being ready earlier, and not being so different from the Pz IV that it would take as long to introduce and familiarize the troops with. But it wasn't as good as the Panther.
In the end then you have to weight the different factors for the circumstances; the Panther was the better tank with enough time to work out its issues, that is without question. The problem is that the Germans didn't have time to work that out and needed a better tank with a better gun; the VK3001H wasn't really that much better than the Pz IV, but it was better enough to justify the shift over to it IMHO due to its ability to mount the bigger gun with modifications and phase out the Pz IV. From a production standpoint the VK3001H would have been easier to transition to and mass produce than the Panther without the early teething issues and form a stop gap until the Panther could be perfected. As it was the German tankers toward the end of the war said what they really wanted was a reliable tank with a good long range gun that was mobile rather than a heavily armored, slow, unreliable slugger; post-war that philosophy resulted in the Leopard 1 without heavy armor and high mobility and reliability. I'd say that while the VK3001H wasn't the ideal tank from that standpoint, based on the war circumstances in hindsight that was probably the better way to go, but as I said that was only knowable with hindsight, as the Germans thought the war was going to be over in 1941-42 so they'd be able to get their next generation of tank ready after the war in the leisure of peacetime.
Another philosophy that I find hard to argue with though is one that has been expressed already on this thread, that the Pz IV was enough as it was. That is potentially an option too, as the Pz IV had stretch left in it and was good enough until 1944 once it had the L48 75mm gun. That topped out what the design could handle and it was pretty much at the brink of being overloaded at that point, but it was able to soldier on even with that. Waiting to introduce something like the Panther in 1944 and taking more time with the development of the design instead of rushing it is also a good option compared to OTL; it allows for focusing manufacturing resources on the Pz IV so that they could max out existing design production and get economies of scale, ensure enough spare parts, and that they always had enough to go around, even if it wasn't an ideal design by that point. Having a bunch more late model upgunned Pz IVs in 1942 and on would be better than the OTL choice of rushing the Panther into production; they tried to get the Panther in production initially in December 1942 and constant delays and technical issues meant the first 'working' Panthers weren't rolling off the assembly lines until Spring 1943. Had they instead used those production resources to build more Pz IVs they could have gotten increased production in Autumn 1942 rather than belated Panther production in Spring 1943. That would certainly have been a better choice and would have bought time for Panther development.
Of course none of that is going to change the outcome of the war, it would just help the German army drag out the war in the East, inflict more losses, keep theirs somewhat lower for a while, and be able to replace losses and keep up AFV strength better on all fronts.
