Is Chiang Mai worth visiting, and does burning season change the answer?

Most recommendations treat the city as a fixed thing, but air quality in the northern months is the variable that quietly decides what you can actually do there. Two people can describe completely different cities depending on when they arrived. The timing side of this is sourced on our end: https://meetlocale.com/guides/best-time-to-visit-thailand What the sources cannot tell us is how much it mattered in practice. If you were there during burning season, did it change your plans, or was it overstated?