I prefer aluminium too but I wouldn’t mind stainless steel if it wasn’t reflective like a mirror. In my opinion it looks a little bit like a trinket. The regular 12 looks more premium to me than the Pro. iPhone 4 had a stainless steel frame too but it looked much much better.
Did you feel the same way with 11 Pro? It is “more” reflective now only because it is flat surface. The gold is also more gold...but i don’t see any reviewers complained about the gold pro.
But yeah, because of the highly reflective nature of silver and gold, i picked Pacific Blue.