Synthetic bongo heads typically have a slightly brighter tone than rawhide or natural skin heads, and they are typically slightly thinner. They are less authentic, but they face none of the issues with detuning and weather that hide heads do, and they require much less maintenance.
The Evans Tri-Center Synthetic Bongo Heads do a good job of managing unruly overtones that typically prevent synthetic heads from sounding authentic. They have a center dot to accomplish this, resulting in a warmer tone than most other synthetic Latin heads, and they won't be knocked out of tune or damaged by the weather.
