I have a carbon-wrapped aluminum stem, and I'm happy with it but totally understand it's faux-carbon for looks and has no advantage over a good aluminum stem. It's a Ritchey so I'm confident of the quality. Normally I would just have an aluminum stem, but this carbon wrapped one came more or less free with a Ritchey CF bar I bought a while ago. I've never had a matching stem and bar before and it kind of looks nice, enough so that I'm OK with the fact that stem is kind of a fraud.