Should You Choose a Metal or Wooden Easel? When choosing an easel, many people are unsure whether metal easels or wooden easels are the best. One is not particularly better than the other. Wood is a traditional choice for manufacturing an easel, but metal can have benefits over wood. While the wooden easel is sturdy in its construction, and there is a lesser chance of a wooden easel wobbling while you work, the metal easel is portable and much lighter. You can fold up most metal easels and store them away without taking up much space. And because metal easels are not porous, they are easily cleaned up when you are finished working. A pochade box is perfectly portable, making it an ideal choice for artists who work off site quite often, and they hold so much that needs to be transported from site to site, including paints, palette, brushes, solvents, and mediums.