I'm not sure there's a single answer to what is "best" or to what size speaker is optimal. It depends what your needs are - how far the sound needs to carry, how efficient the speaker needs to be if you're using an external power amp, the environment(s) you'll be in (outdoors, indoors in a large noisy room, a small quiet room, with a band or by yourself?), how durable/road-worthy the gear needs to be, whether weight or size are considerations, and whether you can get the sound/fidelity your audience expects and that you'll be happy with. In many common gigging environments, striving for ultra-high fidelity audio reproduction is somewhat pointless - the environments are inherently noisy and the audiences not all that attentive or critical even if they appreciate sound that's at least undistorted and reasonably pleasant - that can be achieved with smaller and less expensive gear than some would advocate as a matter of principle, if not pragmatism.
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