Often people say, a
floating table
environment that's fixed by [H]. Usually because of a caption, otherwise a center environment is simple enough, because centering is what you want.
When it comes to a caption, one may have to use a
minipage
and
\captionof
workaround ...
When it has to be fixed, well, than it may be better to use a table environment though since it follows the same syntax, not matter if [H] or not.
At some time, when you may notice, that you have to correct a lot of bad page breaks because of not-moving tables, you may try without [H] again. The setting [!htbp] is the most flexible. But, you are right too, that makes no sense without caption. Once it moves for perfect page breaks, as in professional books, it needs a caption and a label for referencing since you refer to it from another place, such as the page before.
But yes, back to it, if it's centering, call it
center
.
Stefan