Some reasons why Wizards are somewhat overrated compared to Sorcerers:
1) The difference in spells prepared versus spells known isn't actually that large. From levels 1-11 (i.e. the majority of most games), the difference is the wizard's Int mod - 1. (Wizards get Level + Int mod, Sorcerers get Level +1). An extra 2 to 4 spells is noticeable, but it's not an overwhelming difference.
2) One of the wizard's better features is the ability to cast rituals directly from their spellbook without prepping. Which means to maximize that feature, you want the difference between your spellbook limit and your spell prepped limit to be predominantly rituals. To maximize the wizard's flexibility at swapping spells at a long rest means having less rituals. Two of their stronger features are inherently in tension.
3) Long rests don't actually happen that often compared to leveling. This is DM dependent, but if you follow the DMG XP rules and the 6-8 encounters per long rest guidelines, you'll level probably every 2 long rests, 3 at the most. The sorcerer gets 2 new spells every level (1 gained, 1 swapped), which is just as much high level flexibility as a wizard has (which also gains 2 new max level spells every level).
4) The difference between the Wizard and Sorcerer is more about volume than quality. Wizards gets a lot of interesting rituals and some good exploration spells, but there aren't a lot of top-tier spells that are wizard specific. Maybe Simulacrum, but that's high level and already problematic.
This was pretty divided up but I prefer to book it down to what is seen at the table.
A 5th level wiz wit 18 into has dead minimum 14 leveled spells known and can have available for use 9 prepared plus all their non-prepared rituals. The 9 can change every long rest - daily. This allows things like "a travel set", a "town set" and a "fight set". It gets worse as wizards kerp getting teo more known per level free.
A 5th level sorc has 6, known, available total six.
This ignores any bonus spells from scribing.
The. 6-8 between rests thing even in its misconstrued "reqiirement" portrayal does not normally get construed as somehow preventing rests other than those in a "danger set of encounters" so being able to swap out between different legs of missions I'd not thst uncommon, certainly not enough to try and put the daily prepare into comparison to the per level swap one sorcs have.
So, if your adventure starts say with encounter on road to town (travel set in place), then get into town getting more adventure and hooks (town set loaded next day unless its urgent right now run out). Then key up "adventure set" before leaving on a hook etc. That's likely gonna be much more than the sorc's 6 known can do, much more than the 9 plus rituals may seem.
There will be variances between tables, but looking at the published APs, there are a lot of chances for long rests swaps as info is gained and various stages of the adventure transition.
To me, this is even seen with the divines too,
So, yeah, its about volume and about how often you can dial-in needed features.
I do not believe the sorc has a problem with white room spread sheet output. It's more in the actual play-thru adventure stuff that it hits problems imo.
As a player-side thing, going forward, I plan to use the alternate spellbook options to capture the kind of things "sorcerer fluff" opens up while keeping the wizard's mechanics- ditching the "closeted bookworm" arch type for more fun without suffering actual play issues of the blah sorcerer mechanics. Between bard and wizard options, easy to find z lot of fun with less strangling mechanics,