The tab is best, no doubt, in terms of clean release and overall consistency, and it pays to learn to use one if you want to be competitive and such. However, they have downsides, such as the fact that they can be lost while hunting, while the glove is on and stays on at all times, and they get in the way when you want to use that hand to pull arrows, etc. For me, I broke my hand really badly many years ago, and my fingers won't properly relax or straighten out like they would before, so when I use a tab and trim it as it should be trimmed, the string whacks my middle finger because I can't really relax that hand and allow the string to just push it away. If I leave the tab longer to stop this, the extra flap slaps the hell out of my lip, so it just doesn't work for me. If I had my hand re-broken and pinned in place properly, I could probably use a tab, but I'm old and don't feel like going through that now.