Lets go right to it. I've been using other coated strings for years now. On Elixirs you can spot a coating with a naked eye. Here you cannot spot anything. If you bend the string, like at the saddles or on tuning peg, the core gets exposed between windings, like on a regular strings. The feel of the string is just like any other regular strings. Some might like it. That means no coating flaking off like it happens on Elixirs.
With other cheap HB electric strings I had some sound issues. Wounded strings didn't give the same sound level on recordings, and after a while these were dead as the winding got loose. Here with HQS everything sounds ok. From the start my recordings sounds fine, signal level is even across the strings, and after two weeks of playing I'm still satisfied with the tone. I haven't use any string conditioner.
What is responsible for string durability is not the coating only. Often on cheap string the winding gets loose and no cleaning, boiling or conditioning will help the strings after such thing. Here as i mentioned before, the winding seems to be of decent quality.
Also no rusting spotted till this review.