With an ORM you can leverage the IDE to get field names, types and descriptions by simply typing out the name of the model. In pure SQL you need to memorise the schema, or continuously switch contexts to refer back to it.

Another advantage is that you type-check your queries, whereas with pure SQL you can accidentally load a number into a string variable and crash the application.

Because of this I prefer very light ORMs that abstract almost nothing. Those that provide model definitions, automatic migrations and a one-one SQL mapping.