What are the benefits of using forwardRef instead of passing the ref as custom prop to child components in React?

Question

Are there some benefits in using forwardRef over custom prop approach? One assumption that comes to a mind is that with forwardRef React won't try to serialize the passed element, but I'm pretty sure it will not serialize it in both cases. Am I right or wrong?

Custom prop approach:

import { useRef } from "react";

const ParentComponent = () => {
  const someRef = useRef(document.createElement("div"));

  return <ChildComponent somePropWithRef={someRef}/>;
}

const ChildComponent = ({somePropWithRef}) => {
  return <div>Ref is {somePropWithRef.current.nodeName}</div>
}

export default ParentComponent

Same with forwardRef:

import { useRef, forwardRef } from "react";

const ParentComponent = () => {
  const someRef = useRef(document.createElement("div"));

  return <ChildComponent ref={someRef}/>;
}

const ChildComponent = forwardRef((_, ref) => {
  return <div>Ref is {ref.current.nodeName}</div>
});

export default ParentComponent

Bonus question: will custom prop approach somehow affect the behavior of useImperativeHandle hook?