cool_hardware52
Contributor
Well... what @Diving Dubai said: with your weight requirements it's a bit hard to choose between SS and Al plates. The good news is the system's modular and you can always buy the extra plate later. If you plan on mostly diving freshwater 3mm suit in the near future, you might want to go Al with trim pockets, and start saving up for SS.
When faced with the choice between a lightweight, less negative plate and a SS plate, which is a quite common dilemma, I use a simple metric: Will the SS plate overweight the diver in any of their anticipated configurations? In other words will the Plate / reg / tank provide more ballast than their exposure suit requires?
If it does there are two choices; get a lightweight plate and add ballast with thicker suits, or use some minimum amount of exposure suit.
The classic circumstance is the diver that anticipates diving with a 3mm suit and al 80, no suit and an al 80, and possibly cold water diving with 5, 7 mm suit etc.
Clearly with thicker suits the SS plate is a benefit, and it's still ok with a 3mm suit and buoyant al 80, but in swim trunks or a dive skin a SS plate will overweight the diver.
Many of my customers elect to get the Stainless plate, with the understanding that they need to wear at least a 3mm suit. Most find that an acceptable tradeoff for having one plate cover a pretty broad range of applications.
Of course there are applications where the lightest possible plate still adds unwanted ballast, swimsuit + negative steel tanks for example, but these are fairly uncommon.
Tobin