I personally like hang on stands. Hunting in Michigan, its sometimes hard to find a straight enough tree to use a climber without having to cut off tons of branches. With ladder stands you're limited on how high you can go. But with a hang on, you can go as high as you want(as long as the tree is big enough, and you have enough spikes), and its not hard to hang another above or just below you if you want to hunt with a friend(small child is probably better in a ladder stand or ground blind). Another big advantage is in my opinion they are much quieter. Many of the ladder stands I have used, tend to creek, and maybe it was just my buddy but i could hear his climber from 150 yards away. I have never used a tripod so I cant say if they are better or worse, but for the price, you can usually buy 2 or 3 hang on's for the price of one tripod.