Angelina
From what I've seen my-steel is most certainly the most popular among women, and when it comes to the fetish scene, fancy steel and neosteel do still rank significantly alongside mass produced chinese derrivatives (which too many people are paying too much for! Look carefully and you'll find they're only about $30-40 US).
Every belt has its flaws, but due to the way my-steel crotch band is held in place along with it being actually trustworthy for security (unlike cable belts) it's understandable that it's one of the best. It still bothers me that the padding looks like it has a tendancy to fall off and that they're using what appears to be shrink wrap to stop the padding from peeling at the top of the crotch band. I've also read numerous complaints about both neosteel and my-steel's waistband padding glue coming off too.
For men, the equivalent popular rigid belt for comfort would probably be neosteel's arch series, but Mr. Mende passed away earlier this year and his co-worker Daniel has since took over, but isn't fairing up too well to the sudden change.
There's been a lot of changes in the men's chastity scene in the past 20 years with the rising popularity of unfortunately inferior cage designs, but perhaps related there are also new premium rigid belt manufacturers based in china, namely:
Jura's Cocoon Ace series known for their anatomical optimised front piece
SS19125, which seems to be the original manufacturer for a new "european" brand titled FetishTools. People were suspicious of the link and I found out about it by accident too, so I queried about their relationship but they just kept quiet.
The only other manufacturer who has put in as much effort into anatomical design for men is probably Mario Latowski, which uses some kind of cast mould that completely encases the male crotch. They have previously attempted to make a female adaption based on the male belt design, but unfortunately it looks like he didn't care enough and rushed it so it looks more like an unfortunate and impractical pinch deathtrap that doesn't even stop you from touching yourself.
Some other multi-gender manufacturers include:
Carrara, mostly known through the fetish modelling scene, but is otherwise supposedly known to be also one of the most comfortable for women, and were once said to be the most comfortable women's belt as well as the most secure (assuming you get the main titular "carrara" design). They have a very uniquely chonky locking plate, and the titular carrara design's crotch plate is completely convex, and so the labia doesn't have to push through anything.
As for the men's side, well they aren't exactly popular and looking at the design potential issues, I can clearly see why. They are probably attempting to remedy this shortcoming by pushing into the gay adult video market at least according to their website.
Not much is known about long term wear (in fact I've never read a single story about long term wear), and from what I've seen, the padding looks like a similar material to what Tobbe uses on his design, and like his design, it looks like it has a tendency to come off, but I actually haven't seen any complaints regarding this issue on the carrara.
Access Denied used to be a somewhat(?) well known manufacturer before they closed down a few decades ago (I can't remember but I think the owner died). There was an australian restart of the brand with Tollyboy-style radial locks (original Access Denied used free-rotating NeoSteel style shackled padlocks) but unfortunately they no longer manufacture them and they just sell chinese mass produced cheap stuff for a rediculous upmarketted price probably becuase they figured that actually manufacturing a premium belt isn't a reliable income source, especially with australia's poor location and high economic prices.
Tollyboy has gone AWOL and hasn't updated their website since practically the birth of the internet in australia. Their last statement is that they tried to move to australia and set up shop here but failed to do so and tried to move back to europe before COVID. Their men's series, like My-Steel are mostly limited to she-male type designs (female belts with "spacer" tubes) unfortunately and are consequently, not exactly popular for men. Design-wise, they are most similar to NeoSteel.
Fancy Steel is mostly designed for the fetish market from what I can tell. Due to the pricing and flaws in their designs, many people both men and women just end up getting the chinese knock-offs, and in some cases the knock-offs are even better. I don't know much about the original, but the knock-off basically uses something that resembles thickened bicycle brake cables as their mainframe of sorts and is about 2mm thick. I've owned two model types, one of them snapped after only maybe 30 hours of wearing time and the second one is just straight up uncomfortable. Poke-through is a major problem with them too if you want to wear them tight, which for women is kinda like going without the secondary shield on a tight fit, so there's a lot of pinching related problems.
William Jones (la ceinture de chastete, french for"the century of chastity") is out of business because Bill jones (the owner) passed away in 2006. Their designs are very similar to tollyboy and according to the article, that makes sense since it seems he was inspired by tollyboy directly.
I know Tobbe can make you a belt if you request it, but from what I've seen (sorry to be blunt), you're probably better off buying a chinese belt. His design is quite unique in that it looks like it is first cut into strips from sheet metal, hammered into a convex shape with a hole drilled for your bodily needs, then padding is glued to the edges. Like My-Steel and Neo-Steel, the padding tends to come off, but due to the weird design nature of Tobbe's belt, they seem to come off much quicker and are harder to fix back on. I don't think he makes male belts anymore, assuming he ever made any. I know Tobbe had a website up but it's so obscure to find that I literally can't find it anymore.
Recently from China, a new manufacturer came up which goes by the brand name "Yooka" which specialises in 3D printed flexible nylon reinforced belts for both women and men. From what I've heard, there's nothing stopping you from cutting through it since it's not exactly cut resistant, but may be the answer some of you may be looking for when it comes to transitioning through airport security.
Unfortunately, the international version comes with metal lunges that fixate the belt's sizes, so they may set off alarms, and ontop of that, airports are beginning to phase in new milimeter-wave body scanners to better counter the rise of non-metallic threats like 3D printed guns (rip shinzo abe), explosives, drugs and so on, in other words you're probably going to still get stopped by security for wearing one of these belts.
I work at an airport and they use newer machines that adapt the display so the security people don't have to see your transparent junk in 3D, they instead get a computerised interpretation. As a result, unlike other countries where you can refuse a scan for privacy reasons, you CANNOT refuse a scan in australia. Keep in mind these things are sensitive enough to be triggered by a name badge, a belt a pen or even a portable thin plastic hair comb.
