It's all in the sear.
If you sear well and deeply in whatever pan you want, then transfer it to the crock pot, you'll get much the same result as if you were to do it all in the dutch oven.
The dutch oven tends to be a bit faster, though, because you can set the oven to a higher temperature. And you only have one pot, as opposed to the crock pot, the searing pan, and possibly others.
Last weekend I made beef stew in my Amazon Basics 7.3 quart dutch oven. I didn't sear the beef in the dutch oven because I had so much of it (2.5 pounds). That's the one thing I don't really like about the AB dutch oven is that the bottom is a bit narrow. It tapers in too much and that limits browning real estate for something like cubed beef.
So, I used my big chicken fryer pan. 11" with straight sides. TONS of real estate.
Browned the hell out of the beef, then sweated the onion and celery (I chop my onion pretty fine for beef stew, I'm not a big fan of large chunks of onion in it, same with the celery), then deglazed with red wine, and into the dutch oven.
Into the oven for an 90 minutes on 325 to get the meat good and tender (or at least started) then in with all of the vegetables and back into the oven for another 90, then in with a bag of frozen peas and a roux and cook for another 20 to 30.
Came out perfect.
A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me a text that he and his wife were making a Mississippi pot roast, but with a pork loin instead of a chuck. Apparently that's a thing, and he said that it came out fantastic.
So I want to give that a try this year.