I have been shooting competitve benchrest since 1975, and have seen a lot of trends come and go.
FWIW, I belive that some fads are actually determined by what is readily available at the time. When I first started in this wonderful sport, everybody ran a Hart barrel. I met Jerry Hart in 1980 at Camillus - they were producing heaps of barrels and the rest of the manufacturers were not. Shilen barrels were popular in the Southern States. Now, we have a greater choice, and down here in Australia we have one very fine barrel maker in neville Madden (Maddco) plus we have a reliable agent for Kreiger here in my home town. We use what we can get (and what works, of course).
As for the BAT vs Panda....well I have a BAT DS, a Teddy and a Panda. They are all fine actions, and I would go into a World Championship with any of them. I won the Individual 2 Gun at the WBC in NZ in 2001 with the Teddy, and the gold medal in the Aus team in South Africa using the BAT. The bottom line is that you can buy either a BAT or a Panda and be pretty sure that you are getting state of the art machinery. How you use it, is another matter.
Brendan Atkinson
in South Australia