Where would you put ToA and CoS?
I'm not familiar with Tomb of Annihilation or Curse of Strahd. I'd love insight into how they're structured.
I've played through Hoard of the Dragon Queen though I don't own it, so I'm less ready to classify it. Of the other official 5E adventures I familiar with:
1) Lost Mine of Phandelver is adventure path.
2) Out of the Abyss is also adventure path, in a disorganized fashion. It is constructed without the order being clear, but most of the material makes no sense unless the PCs follow the implied story line.
3) Dragon of Icespire Peak is a notably less linear adventure path.
4) Candlekeep Mysteries and Journeys through the Radiant Citadel are anthologies of short adventures. Most but not all of those are short adventure paths.
So, CoS is probably the best regarded 5e adventure, and ToA has some nice features too.
I've played LMoP but these two are different.
Like I've said, modules like Curse of Strahd and ToA that have no clear linear progression, just a beginning, an ending, and a sandbox in the middle. These books also contain more or less finished SETTINGS.
In CoS, an ending is vaguely suggested, but not set in stone either. In ToA, you pretty much kill the bad guy or you die IIRC.
This is my favorite kind of adventure, TBH, but they are few and still not great (badly organized etc.).
The structure is basically a quest to defeat the BBEG, but you do this in a sandbox. So, you can go from chapter 3 to chapter 7, make allies on chapter 4 to fight the baddies at chapter 9's den, etc.
One could argue this is basically a sandbox, but the presence of a strong hook/goal ("strong" as opposed to "subtle") and a clear villain makes it VERY different than an hex map where such things are unclear or absent (e.g., Carcosa or Isle of the Unknown).
This is also different from more linear adventure paths where you go 1 - 2 - 3- 4 (or 5) - 6 (or 7) - 8, like, say, Avernus or LMoP.
So I'd think it deserves a category of its own (not only for being my favorite, lol, but also because it doesn't fit well in either).
Another thing ToA has is a "ticking bomb" of sorts (which CoS has in another, more complex, way). I think sandboxes with time limits (and not only STRICT TIME RECORDS) are a beast of its own, prohibiting PCs from wandering aimlessly.