I primarily write in PowerShell for end-user shell tools and Go for network services.

Where-Object is going to let you cut down on the number of lines of code compared to foreach() and for(), and in my opinion will make the code more readable.

$vms | Where-Object -Property Name -match "sql"

vs

$vmOutput = @()

for($i = 0; $i -lt $vms.count; $i++) {

    if($i.Name -match "sql"){

        $vmOutput += $i

    }

}

vs

$vmOutput = @()

foreach($vm in $vms){

    if($vm.Name -match "sql"){

        $vmOutput += $vm

    }

}

For the Foreach-Object point, that cmdlet also give you the option to use begin{}, process{} and end{} blocks. So that you can with begin{} do something before any of your objects are processed, process your objects with process{}, and after all objects have been process do something with end{}. This logic with for and foreach would have to come before and after the for and foreach statements.

I don't see this as a "PowerShell being clever" but more as a PowerShell is a shell that uses pipelines like nix shells but it has everything as an object unlike nix shells. So you get to take advantage of that.