Of the 3 choises mentioned here's my take on it...

Laminate... My complaint is they are heavy.... There's no getting around it, there's a lot of glue in them.. (i've made them myself)

Wood... Looks beautiful if it's dried properly in the first place and sealed it is stable...

Synthetics... They are stable, and pretty much bullet proof.. I like the way they seem to absorb some felt recoil. I've noticed it on several different rifles when compared side by side with wood stocks.

Now, here's my complaint with them... When you walk through the brush and a limb or ? touches one, it makes a completely different noise than if the same limb rubs on a wood stock. Animials are use to wood on wood, they aren't use to wood on sythetics... I've actually had it happen a couple times just after i started useing synth... stocks that the animial was alerted because of it. I didn't quite get what was alerting them at first, but then i noticed the noise difference myself. After that i got a lot more carefull when i was in brush useing a synthetic stock...

DM