Re: Watch bands: metal or \"rubber\"?
I own metal, rubber, plastic and nylon.
My preferred band most of the time is the metal deployant, usually on my Seiko Black Monster or Citizen Sailhawk stainless watches. I find the deployant style less attractive on titanium watches, as it's usually very thin, and tends to 'bite' my wrist, or flex more than I like. Downside is that I have to take it off everytime I use a laptop, or anything else where my wrist is rubbing on something scratchable - the stainless will chew up plastic, paint or anything else.
The soft nylon, like the Luminox nylon/velcro band, is wonderfully soft, and the single most comrotable band I own, but gets manky after a while, and it's soft enough to get torn up pretty easily with normal use, so it looks like I've got a big fuzzy caterpillar on my wrist. No worries about scratching, though.
The NATO-sytle harder nylon with a buckle I don't find very comfortable - just doesn't work for me at all.
I like the heavy rubber bands with a buckle quite well, like on my Seiko 007, and I like that they don't bang around on things so much, but even then, the metal buckle beats the heck out of my laptop, or anything else my wrist sits on.
Least favorite is the plastic bands - the stock bands on G-shocks are more rubbery, and not too bad, but the hard plastic of stock luminox (the original Navy SEAL style) are horrible - my least favorite feature of the watch. I have one that's six years old now, and still hard and inflexible... ugh.
My only other complaint is watches where the pins just go into a hole in the plastic (some Luminox models, esp.) It's so easy for the pin to wear or scrape the plastic away, and then the watch won't stay on - one of my Luminox has this problem, and it just doesn't work as a watch anymore, because there's a teeny little dent in the wrong place. Spring bars are the weak point of any watch - the band may hold up a truck, but the bars or their attachment point. will give long before that.