Do you play faster/easier with Flats or Rounds

[Artman]

Beat me to it. Labella Copper white Tapes are really slick and fast.

I like those as well, and the Gold Whites for my fretless basses.

 

[GIBrat51]

Aside from the sound preference, do you feel it is faster or easier to play with flat strings or with rounds. Think also of comfort

The keyword is easier. And you can qualify it in your responses, like punchier, clearer... etc.

For me, I think flats with the equivalent tension may actually be faster, but the quality of the flat sound makes it appear as if it is slower. The difference is slight to notice. With a pick, it seems faster if I am honest.

Or it could be neither.

I'm not sure, to tell the truth. 99.9% of my bass playing experience over the last half-century, has been with flats. And, of the 27 basses I currently own? 24 wear flats; 2 wear tapes; and only one wears rounds - TI short scale Jazz Rounds. But, only because they're the only strings, in 12 years of fruitless experimenting, that didn't sound like on that bass...
One thing I can say, though: I can certainly play flats (and tapes) one hell of a lot longer than I can play rounds. Even those (comparatively) very smooth TI Jazz Rounds. Years of nerve damage from vibration, along with having been frostbitten hands many times, have made my fingers very sensitive to the texture of round wound strings. Even the very smooth TIJR's start to feel like a wood rasp after 15 minutes or so. Most other rounds become excruciatingly painful, long before that. Flats, OTOH? Well, some flats are coarser than others; but in all the time I've been playing them? I've never played any flats, that I couldn't play for as long as I wanted/needed to play...

 

[mikeswals]

I play faster on rounds. My experience with flats is that they produce high friction because of their flat surface.

This has always been my experience with flats too: more suface contact = more drag.
I rarely take my flats equipped bass as my only player for a whole night, but when I do, my fingers are sore from the more friction I'm getting.