4K to HD timeline export vs 4k to HD encoding quality difference

Hi All, I was curious to learn whether it's a better practice to keep a 4k native conent in 4k spec sequence and then export to HD via media encoder.. Or is there a diff in quality if you 'scale to frame size' the 4k content on to a HD timeline and render out in HD..Asking about HD output in both instances..

Any tangible difference or either outputs yield the exact same result in terms of sharpness of the final image. .

Any insights appreciated.