Tor Project agrees with this assessment:
On one hand, VPNs are more popular than Tor, so you won’t stand out as much, on the other hand, in some countries replacing an encrypted Tor connection with an encrypted VPN or SSH connection, will be suspicious as well.
The reader will have to be familiar with what their local jurisdiction will consider suspicious on-network activity, but I struggle to imagine a situation where you would be worse off connecting to a VPN instead of Tor on your network connection. Even in famously restrictive countries like China the usage of VPNs by casual consumers to do things like bypass geo-restrictions is extremely commonplace.
This can be a fine idea, assuming your VPN/SSH provider’s network is in fact sufficiently safer than your own network.
We already agree this is the case, this is the basis of our VPN recommendations in the first place.
Another advantage here is that it prevents Tor from seeing who you are behind the VPN/SSH. So if somebody does manage to break Tor and learn the IP address your traffic is coming from, but your VPN/SSH was actually following through on their promises (they won’t watch, they won’t remember, and they will somehow magically make it so nobody else is watching either), then you’ll be better off.