POF is my preference - I found Match to be really quiet, even though I'm in London. I've just started dabbling my toes back in the POF pool after my last relationship ended last summer.
I met long-term now Ex-DP on POF - we were together for six years, he's a good guy and we're still close friends. Before meeting him I had three shorter relationships, also from POF and all three were perfectly decent, good men who I am glad I met and dated, it just became apparent after a few months that we weren't going to go the distance. Of all the other men I've met from OLD (some just for one date; others for a handful) only one was bad. The rest were perfectly agreeable and interesting and it was no skin off my back to share a drink or a meal or a cup of coffee with them.
I think you do need to be quite ruthlessly picky at first whilst online: don't bother responding to winks or lazy ("Hi there x", "What's up?") spam / fishing messages which are clearly being sent to multiple recipients; that sounds callous but if somebody is genuinely interested they'll take the time to read your profile and send a couple of sentences relevant to you. That way you rule out potentially meeting up with men who are just trawling for booty. On the other hand, don't be so picky once you start exchanging messages that you rule men out because they don't seem instantly perfect. Meet reasonably quickly - no more than a fortnight between initial message and first meet-up and preferably less. You should be able to tell from the first couple of messages if somebody really isn't your type or might be a possibility and worth meeting with to check out real-life chemistry and compatibility. Don't spend weeks playing message badminton, building up an illusion of the other person that, when you eventually meet, they probably won't live up to. You don't need to know somebody's life history and worldly dreams to meet them for a drink and a chat.