[armadsen]

This seems to have missed that I also talked about repairing cheap plastic Beats headphones recently. I don't really care if my headphones are made out of plastic or metal. I do care that they don't break easily. As a heuristic, for consumer products, those made out of metal are generally more durable than those made out of plastic. There are of course very strong plastics, used to make very well engineered devices, and also junk made out of metal. But as a stand in for all the details that would explain why one consumer widget is more durable than another, "it's made of metal not plastic" is pretty decent, and I'd argue well-understood by most people.

Worth noting that I'm an engineer, and have designed through to manufacturing things made out of both metal and plastic. I'm not unaware of the subtleties.

[growse]

Oh, I agree, durability and reliability are important, and it can be harder to get those right using plastics. Personally, I enjoy the fact that every single part on my Sennheiser HD25's can be replaced easily, and they're made of plastic.

I just dislike the "Oooooo metal! Must be good!" when it's a lot more complicated than that.