The plastic-nylon,lexan-break quite easily-the vac places out here replace more of the plastic fans than metal ones-and the plastic fans get eroded easily from the sandy soil tracked in-esp at the beach areas.As far as performance goes some say the metal is better because of the metal fans taller blades.And in the earlier plastic fans Kirby used-in a Legend-I bought from a swap shopthe machine worked great with the floor nozzle-when I tried the hose-the fan exploded from age cracking.Metal fans don't have age cracking.The fan bursting was quite startling!