When my husband and I were trying to decide what to buy, we opted for a console. The reasons were the clumsiness of trying to put instruments on our wrists, and price.
In my opinion, we were wrong. The ease of seeing instruments on your wrists is superb. You can arrange your compass, computer, and watch to form a "dashboard" that you can easily see in front of you. There is no need to pull something forward from a retractor.
The downsides (and there are ALWAYS downsides): For a woman, you have to remove all wrist-mounted gauges during the desperate shedding of the drysuit and undergarments for the obigatory post-dive restroom stop. It's a pain. For us oldsters, the displays on the wrist-mounted computers are often smaller and harder to read. And if you are going to use wrist-mounted instruments, it's worth getting the housings to use them with bungee, because the straps that come with them are sometimes incredibly stupidly designed -- my new Suunto compass is an example.
What works is often quite individual. Sometimes it's prescribed by one's educational agency. My agency and I agree that wrist-mounted works better. You may find it different for you.
