I use plastic or ceramic biomedia only. Both are permanent media, both offer plenty of surface area. The plastic is completely self-cleaning, the ceramic is pretty good.
The plastic medium I use is Dupla's MiniKaskade, the ceramic is Eheim's Ehfimech - sold as a coarse mechanical medium, but it serves nicely for nitrification bacterial attachment as well.
I know because I ran quite a lot of tests over several years on sinteed glass, various plastics, assorted ceramics, sponges, lava rock, plain gravel, coarse gravel, etc. to find out which was most effective, most self-cleaning, and most lasting in my particular (canister-only) application.