  The recent major modification, r$^2$SCAN, of the SCAN (strongly constrained
and appropriately normed) meta-GGA exchange-correlation functional is shown to
give substantially better spin-crossover electronic energies (high spin minus
low spin) on a benchmark data set than the original SCAN. The deorbitalized
counterpart r$^2$SCAN-L is almost as good as SCAN and much faster in
periodically bounded systems. A combination strategy for balanced treatment of
molecular and periodic spin-crossover therefore is recommended.
