When comparing Base16 family vs Gruvbox, the Slant community recommends Gruvbox for most people. In the question“What are the best VIM color-schemes?” Gruvbox is ranked 1st while Base16 family is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Gruvbox is:
Three different variants are available, each with different contrasts.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Contains many color-schemes
Pro Out of the box support for many applications (vim, terminals, etc...)
Base16 template repositories on github have configurations for most popular applications where a color scheme can be applied. This reduces headache for users when applying or switching color schemes.
Pro Its Solarized Dark scheme is compatible with htop
This is just one example of an app that doesn't work with vanilla Solarized Dark (half of the usernames in htop have the same color as the background)
One has to use a patched htop version.
Pro Multiple contrast options
Three different variants are available, each with different contrasts.
Pro Very easy on the eyes
Both the light and dark version have a reddish background for a consistent look when toggling between them.
Pro Have light and dark version
Dark background has brown-yellowish retro colors, light background is yellowish with pastel highlights.
Pro Made ready for multiple text-editors
Ports for Atom, Sublime, TextMate and Emacs and other text editors are available.
For a full list of available ports.
If you are using a Jetbrains IDE.
Pro You can go all day with Gruvbox
Pro It can be customized in detail
Size of the tabs, icons of file types, contrast of the color schemes, accented colors, indentation in the sidebar, sizes of the status bar and dozens more.
Cons
Con Schemes are limited to 16 colors
You may not be able to use as many colors as you want for a particular application without manual manipulation since base 16 color schemes are limited to 16 colors.
Con Each theme needs manual tweaking
The base16 color schemes are really great but as a vim theme they require a lot of manual tweaking to be viable. One example is that in one theme a neon green bg is used with a white fd rendering any part of the vim UI that uses those two colors together illegible.
Con That white is very painful to look at using an F.lux like applications
While it looks quite good for some time, using Night Shift/F.lux applications just makes reading things with Gruvbox quite painful.