I started with the mentality that Apple bands weren't worth the cost. My logic went that with the cost of 1 Apple band, I could buy many third party knock-off bands.
The problem though, is that there will always be a compromise when you buy a knock-off band. At first, I thought that I could live with it. Since I wear my Apple Watch daily, these little annoyances add up and are noticeable. So I bought more third party bands.
In the end, I decided to save up and bought official Apple bands instead. The quality impressed me to the extent that I rather own a small number of official Apple bands that I thoroughly enjoy than to own a wide library of knock-off third party bands that I have to tolerate.
The only knock-off bands I still use are the JeTech Milanese loops. These ones still fall short of Apple's (obviously), but the compromises didn't bother me too much.
If you want to go this route, then try it out and see if you can tolerate it long term.
Note that what I've said applies only to knock-off bands. Original third party bands with their own custom designs obviously have far better quality.
