Every shower wall material comes down to the same trade. More joints means more tolerance for an imperfect wall and easier repair; fewer joints means less to clean and fewer places for a poor detail to hide. None of these materials is waterproof — the waterproofing sits behind all of them — so the comparison is about upkeep, substrate and where the seams land, not about keeping water out of the framing.
Tile is the most forgiving material and the highest-maintenance surface. A 300 by 600 tile on a 900 by 2,100 wall puts roughly twenty linear metres of grout on that one wall. Cementitious grout is porous, it discolours in a room that dries slowly, and it eventually wants raking out and replacing. Epoxy and urethane grouts largely solve the porosity and are harder to work and far less forgiving of a sloppy set-out.
Large-format slab and solid surface trade joints for flatness. A porcelain sheet 1,200 by 2,800 can clad an entire alcove wall in one piece, so an enclosure that would have carried twenty metres of grout carries three or four sealant joints instead. The catch is that the substrate has to be genuinely flat, because a slab telegraphs any bow and there is no bedding thickness available to correct one. Solid surface behaves much the same and can be thermoformed round a corner, removing that joint entirely. Acrylic surrounds are lightest and quickest, come in fixed sizes and fasten to the studs, so a stud out of plane shows as a wave across the panel.
Where the seams fall is a design decision rather than a fabrication detail. A joint centred on a wall reads as deliberate; the same joint 200mm off centre reads as a mistake. Inside corners and the wall-to-floor junction are movement joints in every one of these materials — flexible sealant, never grout.