Agree. Bevels baked in normal map look nice for sure until you have to scale your working 2k or 4k down to ingame 256, 512 or 1k. Here the difference gets more obvious. Custom normals ALWAYS retain clean shading (if applicable - i.e. for tech staff), while normal maps loose the crispness and get blurry. The hard edges…
I see the problem, but this is more like a lightmapping issue. What would be the size of this object in a game? Cause its like 2 meters tall then 16 or 17 is obviously not the way to go. But if its only like 10 cm then probably you won't notice it as a player. Does Unity use pixel padding on the lightmap generation?…