It's all personal opinion and opinions vary. A lot. But, I just can't get myself into loyalty, or antithapy, of any inanimate objects. Or brands.
I have the advantage of over 40 years of loading with every current brand of dies except Dillion, including maybe 8-10 sets from makers that are no longer with us. I find them different but they are all good IF we use and/or adjust them properly, bar none. It is my considered apprasel, based on long use and a good concentricity gage, that, on average, there is as much difference between dies of the same maker as there is between makers. Getting a die set that matches our chamber is a crap shoot and it has nothing to do with the die brand.
A few, mostly trivial, feature differencies in dies do exist. Some folk prefer some features but that's just a personal thing, not a difference in quality, per se.
Lock rings differ but they all work fine IF we use them correctly.
Seaters have slightly different designs but no one consistanly stands above the others on target! That includes Hormady's short sliding sleeve design. That sleeve can make it a little easier to install the bullet but it offers nothing for loaded round concentricity. Nor do it's near competitors such as the very expensive RCBS "competition" dies, improve on that.
Micrometer heads on seaters offer a single advantage; it's easier to change a specific seating depth on a specific cartridge by a specific amount. But exactly the same thing can be done on any conventional seater if we take our time and work carefully. If we don't do that we won't be making precise ammo anyway, no matter the tools we use!
Dies come in two grades, first and second, and even then there is little actual difference on target, at least not directly attributable to the dies used. Forster and Redding Competition/BR seater dies are tied for first place because of their near identical full case sliding sleeve design. All of the others are tied for second place, including Lee. No exceptions. Well, except for personal opinions based on .... higher price or prettier external appearance, maybe?
Hornady copied Lee's excellant method of holding the decap/expander stem in a collet.
It's the best design going for holding the stem well centered in the die body. Bu it IS neccesary to get that collet nut tight enough to hold it. Seems many don't want to do that so Hornady recently added a nut to the top of the stem to prevent it from pulling out if the nut is too loose.
Almost all "scratching dies" are due to the owners running sandy, dirty brass through them. That, and/or a lack of case lube resulting in brass galling onto the die walls. At least I have NEVER seen a new sizer from any maker that would scratch cases. No argument if any of YOU got one that did, but even so the maker would surely stand behind the product if you returned it to them without further damage or few thousand of rounds of use. Seems two years is plenty long enough for actual manufactoring defects to show up. After that, user negligence SHOULD be at our own expense.
Being foolish is always expensive. There is nothing that some people can't break, including non-breakable decap pins. Just a fact of life. It seems some folks can damage an anvil with a silver spoon but that's not the anvils fault!
Pick a die set, pay what ever it takes to make you feel comfortable. What ever it is, know that you've got a "good" die brand and use it happily! But it won't do a thing on a target that Lee's dies won't do, including long life. Unless it's Redding or Foster and most guns - and shooters and reloaders - aren't good enough to see any difference even with them.
