Ok, so I've got my first experience both with coated bullets, but also with coating them myself. I'd picked up a tub of the Hi-Tek bullet coating powder. I picked up a cheap $40 toaster oven at my local grocery store. I casted up a few hundred 200gr LSWC .452" bullets for my 1911. Mixed up 20g of the powder in 100ml of Acetone, and squirted around 4ml of the solution into an empty plastic coffee can with a couple hundred of my cast bullets and swirled it, rolled it around, shook it, etc. for maybe one minute.
Where I live it's hot and dry so they were already starting to be dry as I set them out base down on a wire mesh tray that came with the toaster oven. I had my doubts because they didn't appear to be all that well coated, but figured I'd just follow the instructions and see what happened. I turned a fan on blowing over this tray for a few more minutes till I could tell they were well dried out, then turned the fan off and put the mesh tray into the toaster oven at 400 F for 11 minutes. They say like 8-12 minutes, but since I gave the toaster oven no warm-up time I just settled on 11 minutes from cold. Figured over the first minute it would be heating up, then it would have 10 minutes of baking time.
The coating darkened and became much more visible after it was baked. I laid the tray out on top of the toaster oven with the fan blowing on it again and in just a few minutes the bullets were at about room temperature. They looked pretty decent though there were patches on various bullets where it seemed the coating hadn't gotten. I repeated the process for a second coat, and after the second coat and they had been baked again they looked really, really good. I was very surprised. They feel nice and dry to the touch, you don't feel like you're handling raw lead alloy anymore, etc. I really like it. I pushed these through my lubrisizer and just didn't pull the handle down far enough to squirt lube into the grooves. They sized up easily, the sizer left the surface nice and smooth and shiny with the coating not breaking up or tearing, no crackeling, no flaking off, etc.
I loaded up and shot around 100 rounds today with these bullets, and they shot well, there wasn't the smoke I normally get from my conventionally lubed bullets. There were some small streaks in the barrel, but less than I'd normally see with my cast bullets, and it cleaned up pretty quickly.
It does add some more time and labor to the process. If this weren't a hobby I'd say that casting my own bullets, coating them myself, loading them up, etc. wouldn't be worth the time. If I ever get tired of casting/coating/sizing/loading my own ammo I'd certainly consider these coated bullets a good option to purchase commercially, as compared to just buying hard cast bullets. The improved cleanliness in handling the bullets themselves is awesome. The gun was considerably less fouled after shooting almost 100 rounds of these, compared to all the waxy bullet-lube & carbon residue the gun normally has on it afterwards. I think I'm a fan.