A performing musician with several stringed instruments (2 reso guitars, 1 6-string acoustic, 1 12-string acoustic, 1 banjo, 1 mandolin, a tele and a strat) and demand for consistant, high quality sound, strings are a massive expense!
Ideal strings for me should be outstanding in sound and life span.
Elixir shocked me with both.
I play mostly acoustic, and am quite picky with both sound and feel. I have tried out a lot of strings and ended up on D'Addario's Phosphor Bronze flat tops. (Great strings, but expensive and don't last longer than "normal" strings. Brilliance is lost and corrosion makes for increased playing resistance)
Elixir's, then..
A coated string, I expected a somewhat muffled sound and some tearing of coating as a trade-off for sustained life. But no!
The sound is full and brilliant, but without some of the harshness found in most (new) strings.
Feel-wise, the coating makes for an easy glide over the strings, much like flat tops.
So both soundwise and in feeling, the Elixirs are brilliant.
As for life span, I was knocked off my feet!
I slide a lot, as well as sweating a lot. But my rough brass slides, my heavy fretboard fingering and my sweaty finger picking and heavy pick-ing have yet to cause any detectable fraying.
Corrosion, even after a very long time and obvious wear, is down to a minimum: Only the totally worn-through contact surfaces are affected, and clear upp after a brief playing session. So no playing resistance.
I had a set of strings on a spare acoustic, although played relatively sparingly at the time, for almost two years(!!!) before I realized it!
And that only because of pitch inconsistency while fretting, no obvious wear.
Gig-use.. They last easily 10-15 gigs before any detectable amplified sound degradation (magnetic and piezo pickups), although acoustically some brilliance might be lost at the end of that time.
I now use exclusively Elixir strings on all my instruments (except the harmonicas and the parlor guitars, which have silk and steel).
During these four years I have not broken a single string playing.
The only drawback is that they are expensive initially, but in a few months you are already saving.
Elixir's string are great!