Re: Watch bands: metal or \"rubber\"?
You are getting two different kinds of answers. First, generic answers about rubber vs. metal, and then about your particular Luminox.
The real answer, IMHO, is that it depends on the strap or bracelet itself. Some metal link bracelets are great, and some are poorly designed and built. Same for rubber straps. The old Rolex bracelet had cheap end pieces and a cheap clasp, but the newer bracelets have solid machined and milled steel endpieces and clasps.
In your situation, I think the rubber strap is a superior choice on the Luminox. Their metal bracelets, at least the several I've seen, are very poorly designed and executed variants of the breed. In particular, the attachment to the watch case (the final link, through which the spring bar goes, and the first small link) is really poorly done. The links all abrade each other, and the final link is simple folded sheetmetal. The Seal watch bracelets are worse than some of their others (the many Luminox watch models are made by different vendors for the importer, who has a license agreement with the Swiss maker of the tritium tubes on the dials and hands -- they're not all done in the same place!). The rubber strap is very thick, and it has a milk chocolate smell (yes, many makers have added a vanilla or chocolate component to their straps, to mask the rubber odor).
Deployant clasps come in all shapes and styles. The folding clasp used on most metal bracelets is usually a cheap and large stamped-and-folded-steel job. Better ones are milled and machined, if they're part of a metal bracelet. For leather straps, you can get many superb single- and double-fold deployants (some have locking buttons); the advantages of a deployant are that they don't force you to bend the strap to put it on and take it off, so the leather lasts much longer, and you are much less likely to drop the watch when putting it on or taking it off! But it would be difficult to find one to fit the thick Luminox rubber strap.
The weight in the Luminox metal Seal watches is in the case, not the crystal. The 44 mm case is far larger than that Rolex, but nowhere near as nicely done. That's not a fair comparison!
The spring bar is always a weak point, unless you get a very rare watch with super-beefy spring bars (some Seikos). Most are one of two thicknesses, and even Rolex spring bars aren't very thick. You can look for watches with screwed-on straps, of course.