I have badger; boar; horse; fake bristle; and a nice soft synthetic myself for different applications. Which is your favorite type of bristle?

I have a tendency to favor boar bristles for face-lathering, but am becoming more and more enamored with good synthetics.

aka "splinters"? ("Board" bristles)

Synthetic. I owe it all to @GDCarrington

I corrected the auto correction.....
Beware: I have typed 'splinters' and had it appear as 'sphincters' in an email before. This required some explaining....

Depends on the soap or cream I am using. For some I prefer badger and for others I prefer boar. I just ordered 2 Semogue boar brushes, so that will tell you which direction I tend to lean. I don't have a horsehair and I don't have a synthetic. My next brush will probably be a synthetic.

I have a omega synthetic that I absolutely love. it holds plenty of lather or water and it is so much softer than my boar brushes. I just picked up the new Fine 20mm Angel hair synthetic and it is super silky smooth. I look forward to trying it out and i'm sure it will be a great product. I have never tried a badger brush but I would think they are overrated since there are so many great brushes available for a fraction of the price.

My syns and horse are used with creams in a scuttle for application. Boar; badger; and pure brsitle is used with my hard cake soaps since they need resistance to properly lather up. They are certainly soap/cream specific for sure. But my Omega S-Brush is one of the softest most supple brushes I have and a pleasure to the face.

Fairly stiff boar and/or badger. Do not like soft bristles. Have gotten great results from old nylon.

I agree...boar brushes are more reasonably priced...and they make a great lather.

I just am blown away at how much some of the badger brushes cost. in my opinion you don't need to spend that much to get a good quality brush. I prefer my synthetic because it is much softer and feels great on the face, but the boar brushes load triple mill soaps much faster and are a great value as well.

I purchased a nice badger because it seemed the thing to do...and I do like it for some of my soaps. It was expensive...and now I can say I have a badger brush. But I prefer a boar brush.

theres nothing wrong with badgers and I have seen some beautiful brushes that were badger. on the other hand it varies by the manufacturer. the first brush I bought would loose like 20-30 hairs a shave. I tried everything to save it and make it work but it was insane how much it shed. when it comes to brushes it is more about the quality than the type of material used IMO

I have boar, synthetic, horse, and badger(several grades). I like all of them but truthfully not equally.
badger is king among the shaving brushes. it sets the standard the rest seek to achieve.
my opinion of course, ymmv.

I relate "bristle" to boar brushes and badger brushes I relate to "hair". For my hard soaps such as Tabac and MWF, I use boar only since this is mainly loading the brush and then face lathering (feels so good ). However, I use my badgers with soft soaps and creams in which I scuttle lather.

The one exception is with my Semogue 1305. This well broken in boar is good with hard. soft, and creams.

I generally prefer boar. Though that is slowly changing to good synthetics.

I have one synthetic (2 knots on order now), but I use mostly badger and boar. I do have a horse, but I really do not like it. My favorite brushes now are badgers though.

I love the TNG finest knot. Great backbone,just the right amount of stitch, and reasonably priced.