The Bengal coat is unlike any other cats. It's texture and feel is more like a mink then a cat and it does not shed much at all. Our male sheds a bit especially when I'm rough housing with him but our females shed so little that it is not noticeable. Comparing a Bengal to a conventional short haired domestic I would say the Bengal might shed 10% of what would be considered the norm and this is likely why so many people with allergies are not affected by them. That said I had a guy in the store the other day that was stuffed up with in 15 minutes of walking though the door so there are certainly exceptions.
The Bengals coat requires no maintenance at all in my experience. They are an extremely clean cat and we have never bathed any of our Bengal's although that does not mean they don't get bathed. They often have a fascination with water and our male gets himself pretty wet almost daily. So far my experience is that I could not see any reason to bath a Bengal unless perhaps I was going to enter it in a cat show. If you look at the adults on our kitten page
http://www.wildexpressions.ca/b_kittens.htm you will see that both of them have a sheen to their coats.
They do not have multiple layers of coats and their coat is generally referred to as a pelt as it is that different from a domestic cat, although not all Bengals are pelted. They inherited this trait from their ancestors, the Asian Leopard Cats, who were killed by the 1000's for the fur trade back when that was acceptable. Often a Bengal kitten's fur will be relatively coarse and become silky with maturity. Interestingly when you shave off a Bengals fur the skin is spotted. They will occasionally spit up like any cat will but hairballs are not common.
I'm afraid there is no way to adequately explain something like the texture or feel of a Bengal's pelt. or even the color of it. Pictures capture so little of the subtleties that all people see are the spots but there is much more then that going on color wise. The kittens that XFactor and Royal Treat produce are heavily glittered which robs them of a bit of their contrast but is such a special thing to see that it is a very desirable trait. When the sun hit them the glittering lights up and looks like the cats have been dusted with a fine powered gold dust. They literally glitter gold in the sunlight. No other cat does this so there is no way to relate it to someone that has not seen it. I have taken 100's of photo's trying to capture it and have failed.
here is a website that has a nice bunch of photos showing various patterns
http://www.kingsmarkfarms.com/bengals/kingpattern.htmHope I more or less answered your questions and feel free to fire away if you have more
