they are absolutely tremendous! had ours since October and tried them properly for the first time last night. We had a white out with main roads covered but needed to get to a 30th party so ventured out in the wife's newly named snow mobile. tried numerous times to get the car stuck in deep snow/high inclines from standstill at junctions and just couldn't throw it! was quite satisfying passing stuck cars in the car park whilst playing around
the way we looked at it we needed new tyres in October so we bought dunlop winter tyres instead of summers and they worked out the same price as we would have spent anyway so it would have been insane to get anything else. we'll get another set next year for the rear to spread the load. Its all down to affording them really but if your due tyres then why think about it?
your summers wear quicker at temps below 7 deg C and don't perform as well so switching over from Oct-Apr will mean longer lasting tyres
Negative comments are just unhelpful to the reality of how good they are really......