Let me start by saying I dive a BP&W myself and it is a preference built on experience.
That said, I’m an Instructor and will always start instructing classed using a jacket style BCD. What I use is a Back inflator style but to be able to properly kneel underwater without having to wav my hands to balance I must overweigh my back pockets compared to the front dumpable pockets. For the open water checkout dives I may switch to my BP&W for the last dive to familiarize the student with it as they may see them in the future or be buddied with a user.
So do I suggest a BP&W for a new OW diver? No! With reason and exception. Please read and understand the exception and you’ll understand the reason by the time I’m done explaining:
The exception is a diver who rents outfits for a fair number of dive trips after their checkout dives and really works to perfect their trim and buoyancy control in a jacket before moving to the BP&W. Jacket style BCD are limited on how they can be trimmed and doing so and gaining solid buoyancy control skills under these conditions will help you make the adjustments needed to properly trim a BP&W with the multitude of options available for a BP&W. Since a BP can be fitted with plates, pockets, channel weights or worn with a weight belt and even bought with different weights from sub 1 LB to over 10 LBS and with different harness configurations with or without releases and pads using tanks of differing capacities and wings of appropriate lift capacities. You can see the choices could hamper a new divers progress. After the diver has some experience weighted and trimmed properly in a BCD they should then try a few different configurations of BP&W and if possible have an experienced diver help you through the choices.