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I have been using the 103 non-adjustable mouth for a few months, they are really great planes. All of my 9.5's are honed with a 45 degree bevel on the blade for finish planing, so I honed a 30 on my 103's so I can use them for general work. They are really nice for cleaning up strips after splits, taking the back sides off nodes, and, if I was still roughing by hand, they would be great for that. I have tried them for preliminary taper planing and I have found I get tear-out with them. Don't know if it's the lower angle, or the fact that the non-adjustable mouth set to take .0015-.002 has a big opening and that leads to the tearout, but whatever the reason I am not using them for final planing. For whatever reason i NEVER get tearout with the 9.5's honed to a 45, in fact they worked great to clean up the tearout I got with the 103's. Your experience may be different but that's what I found. I plan to eventually pick up the adjustable mouth version of the 103 and give it a try. I might also try setting the blade bevel on my 103's at 45 but I doubt it I still want a couple planes I can hog off material with and the 103 is perfect for that.

Some real real benefits of the 103 are the light weightness, comfort in the hand, and the fact that if my strips go "out of square" the narrowness of the plane allows me to tilt it more easily than a 0.5 so I can get "back" into square quicker. However this is a short-term benefit, as I am starting to get better and better at planing it's only the rare instance that my triangles don't stay at 60's any more.

For final, final finishing my favorite is still the 9.5 with the groove. I only have one right now but I am going to get at least one more maybe two. When I'm doing my final planing I use the non-grooved to get me down within 10 thou and then I switch to the grooved plane. I set it so the blade is just below the shims by .0005 or so (not that hard to do by feel) it is just a no-brainer for final planing it works so well. I have a 212 and I like it but I just really like not planing the metal with my blades so I just use the 212 to scrape the enamel it works really nice for that.

PS you can easily use the grooved sole planes to take all the way down to final, you don't have to leave .003. Either set the blade like I do so it's just below the shim, or set your forms to accommodate the extra .003.