Is it better to use INNER JOIN or EXISTS to find belonging to several in m2m relation?

Question

Given m2m relation: items-categories I have three tables:

• items,
• categories and
• ite

Answer 1

 select distinct `user_posts_id` from `user_posts_boxes`
     where `user_id` = 5 
     and 
     exists (select * from `box` where `user_posts_boxes`.`box_id` = `box`.`id` 
     and `status` in ("A","F"))
     order by `user_posts_id` desc limit 200;



 select distinct `user_posts_id` from `user_posts_boxes`
 INNER JOIN box on box.id = `user_posts_boxes`.`box_id` and box.`status` in ("A","F")
 and box.user_id = 5
 order by `user_posts_id` desc limit 200

I tried with both query, But above query works faster for me.Both tables having large dataset. Almost "user_posts_boxes" has 4 million and boxes are 1.5 million.

First query took = 0.147 ms 2nd Query almost = 0.5 to 0.9 MS

But my database tables are inno db and having physical relationships are also applied.

SO I should go for exists but it also depends upon how you have your db structure.