Those are pretty much the same thing. Branches work for that purpose because commits are immutable - the branch just saves you from having to remember the hash. A tag would also work in this case.
You're underselling it :) That is the entire point. Don't tell me you enjoy using reflog. This "just saves you" in the same way that a rebase "just saves you" from having to write out enormous cherry-pick statements.
While "the plumbing is the same" is a nice bit of trivia, the porcelain is all that we should care about when we're recommending behaviors.
