The stainless is nice and worth the extra money IMO. My first watch was a Space Grey aluminum model.
I wanted the Space Black SS, but at the time it only came with the SB Link band and cost like $1100 total. I dealt with only having the SGAl and enjoyed it until I scratched it like a month or so into ownership. Around June/July 2015 or something like that, Apple finally started selling the SBSS with a sports band for like $600 or so. I sold my SGAl on Craigslist and picked up the SBSS.
Immediately fell in love with the weight of the watch and how premium the deep glossy finish looked. I loved that it matched the vast majority of the bands available and always looked great. The durability took awhile to realize, as I was super careful with it after scratching my first watch. Eventually I hit the SBSS on something and expected the worst and it was fine. Realized this watch could truly take a beating and stopped worrying about it as much.
Fast forward to the Series 4 launch and my OG watch had a faded OLED screen, but the watch crystal and body were still flawless after 3+ years. Made the decision to order another SS watch that much easier to do despite the price of a 42mm SS watch rising to $750.
This time I thought I’d convinced myself that I was going to order a Blue Al watch and keep my SBSS Series 4 to wear bands that wouldn’t match the Blue or when I needed to dress up the watch a little bit. About a day before preorders went live, I started to think about how I scratched my first watch a month into ownership and how poorly my wife’s Al Series 4 has aged even in comparison to her OG Series 0 Al watch and told myself to just order a Graphite SS and trade in my SBSS S4 to lessen the blow.
Then about 12 hours before preorder time, I realize I’ve essentially worn the same watch for 6 years and decided to order the SBTi. 😩
Hopefully the Ti is low maintenance as my SBSS watches have been.
Sorry for the long post y’all…
