The thing nobody mentions is the sound. Not a bad sound, just one you don't expect, the faint ring of a chair leg catching the table base when someone leans in to grab the salt. You stop noticing it after a month or two, but the first few dinners it makes you feel like you're eating in a workshop.
Where it goes wrong is comfort over distance. A metal table top holds the temperature of the room more than wood does, so in a cold apartment in January it can feel faintly unwelcoming until the food and the bodies warm it up, and in a sunroom that gets hard afternoon light it can be genuinely hot to rest your arms on by three in the afternoon. It's also not forgiving of a wobble. Wood can hide a slightly uneven floor with a shim and nobody's the wiser, but a metal base transmits every bit of unevenness straight up, so if your floor has any slope at all, check it before you fall in love with the look. When it arrives, or while you're still in the shop, get down and look at the welds and the leg feet. Cheap ones have feet that are just metal on metal, no glide or pad, and those will scratch a wood floor in a single dinner party. Push on the table top itself too, a thin surface will flex slightly under pressure and that's a table that'll feel unstable for years, not just on delivery day.
Finish matters more than most people expect going in. A matte black or a bronzed, slightly uneven finish hides fingerprints, water rings, and the general scuffing of daily life far better than anything polished or chrome, which shows every single touch by the second week. Warm toned metals, aged brass, a soft gunmetal, tend to sit easier in a room with any wood furniture already in it, where a stark chrome or raw steel can read cold and a little clinical next to anything worn in. Keep it away from rooms already heavy with other hard, reflective surfaces, a kitchen with a lot of stainless and glass doesn't need another cold note, it needs something to soften it, and a metal table there just adds to the echo rather than balancing it.
Get the finish and the legs right and it holds a room that otherwise leans too soft, giving the furniture you already own something sturdier to lean against.
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