bare aluminum and anodized aluminum at least to me seems very prone to scratches

I just thought I'd point out that there are two types of anodizing (three, really, but one is obsolete). There's just plain-old, regular anoziding, and then there's hard anodizing, which is much thicker and quite scratch resistant.

Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with powdercoating (which is what I assume you mean), but it does add a layer of thickness that anodizing doesn't, which could be an issue.