Worth the hype or a gimmick?
Yes. Just look at weight and density. The closer to lead the better, only thing better then lead is pure tungsten. But there is also diminishing return, I wouldn’t spend money on tungsten for above 28 ga. I use bismuth, you get more pellets per weight, where as steel it’s opposite
I have no use for steel unless it’s only thing I can find.
I use boss in both 20ga and 12ga
What is the density? I imagine if someone shot mostly steel and they switch it will seem like an improvement. But if you've shot a lot of hevishot, heavyweight, or TSS, you will probably be underwhelmed.
Thus why I said nothing beats tungsten. It’s 18 g/cc therefore it is over 2x the g/cc of steel. But not everyone can buy 200lbs at a time overseas to make it cost effective
Lead is 11.3 g/cc and hevi shot12 is very similar at a density of 12g/cc, but it’s almost as expensive as tss due to it being a watered down “Tungsten” based alloy. Heavyweight is just tungsten also
Copper plated Bismuth is roughly 22-24% denser then Steel.
Only an individual can justify price difference between bismuth, hevishot(tungsten alloy) and straight TSS. Hevi-12 is 2x the price of bismuth, and bismuth is 1.5x of steel.
So to answer TX85 question yes for the performance difference over steel and the slight price increase compared double the price for Hevi-shot or TSS…. yes it’s worth it. The next argument would be is the price increase in Hevi and TTS worth it over Bismuth in my opinion not in a gauge bigger then 28.