It’s debatable whether there is much value between using an aluminum adapter when the part it connects to is plastic, but whenever I’m given the choice, I’ll generally pick metal. There is one big benefit of aluminum over plastic, and that is the actual tripod mount portion – I’ve actually had one of the GoPro ones fail on me where it broke at the 1/4"-20 insert portion as opposed to the actual GoPro adapter portion. Once other advantage is that the threaded screw is actually integrated into the mount, and doesn’t have a cap at the end so you don’t need to worry about screw length or what happened to the nut.
I’ve actually ordered a couple of different metal tripod mounts over the years, and in general, I found them to be a bit harder to work with than the plastic ones – primarily because in order to get it to really grip the GoPro tightly (so it doesn’t tip up or down), you REALLY had to crank it down. With the plastic ones, the plastic easily bends when you tighten the screw/nut, but many of the metal ones tend to get a bit overzealous on the thickness of their two end parts. Thankfully this one was the first that I found that still had the perceived strength of metal, but also was thin enough at the ends to not require you to crank it until it’s ready to strip.
Not really much more that I think can be said about it – it hold the GoPro well, has held up the last couple months without any signs of wear, and wasn’t much more expensive than the plastic ones, so all in all a good buy.
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