The split is latitude, not quality
This guide holds 22 waterfalls and they split almost perfectly by latitude. The 14 in the south average 4.56 and carry 71,203 Google reviews between them. The 8 in the north, around Singaraja and Munduk, average 4.64 and carry 9,903.
Tegenungan Waterfall on its own has 38,020, which is several times the entire north.
What the numbers are actually measuring
That is a driving-time gap being reported as a popularity gap. The southern falls are twenty minutes from a flat white; the northern ones are two hours of mountain road each way.
Nothing else about them differs, except this: 4 waterfalls here are rated 4.8 or better and 3 of them are on the far side of that drive.
What volume does to a place
The busiest waterfall in this guide is also one of the lowest rated of the 22, which is the clearest example on the island of what volume does to a place: the queue, the entrance fee, the photo spot with a line at it.
The quiet northern ones have the opposite problem. Several of the highest-rated carry no review count at all, so their rating is a much softer fact than the number suggests. Use it to choose between two long drives, not to justify one.
Two hours each way, and what decides it
A northern waterfall is a whole day and a southern one is a morning, so the honest question is not which is prettier but how many days you have. On a week-long trip the north is one of them. On four nights it probably is not, and the 14 southern falls exist precisely for that case.
What tips it is who you are going with. The northern group involves a long mountain drive, a walk down, and a walk back up in the heat, and the 22 entries here include several where the climb is the actual experience. The southern ones are a car park, a ticket booth and a set of steps. Neither is better. They are answers to different mornings.
Leave at six anyway
Only 7 of the 17 with published hours are open by seven, but the opening time is not what decides your morning. The road is.
Every one of these is doable as a day trip from the south and almost none of them is pleasant after nine. You are also navigating mountain roads with no signage and no phone signal you can count on, which is the one part of a waterfall day worth preparing rather than improvising.
