I've sat on the fence on these for years, counter-justifying a feature that gives no true performance improvements to the car for its price point. In that meantime, I had plenty of fun downshifting with the center knob for spirited driving, but never got used to pushing forward to shift up since the motion is unnatural and opposite compared to the motion for dog box sequentials.
After bolting on a catback and CAI, I knew there was more fun to be had from the VQ platform after learning to use paddles in racing sim. Install was pretty straightforward from pulling trim panels, removing about five screws, and unraveling the unused harnesses in my non-sport G. With these paddles plugged and played, this is one of those mods that go a long way for enthusiast feel, next to sway bars for handling and CAIs to wake up the VQ under the hood. Shifts are not only made faster with both hands on the wheel, they're so much more fun. Best of all, they are able to be used while in automatic D mode.
When manually using paddles in D, holding down either or both paddles or simply driving without manual input will return the transmission to D, the nominal automatic mode. This is a big improvement over the center knob which must be shift to DS to manually shift and must be switched back to D to return to automatic after manual input, resulting in a flurry of unwieldy slaps on the knob with a hand off the wheel.
Honest recommendation is to find a working set at the lowest price you can find to make the most of your money, including used pairs, as failure of the switch mechanisms is rare and is relatively easy to repair. If you're skeptical of used goods, trust that Z1 has you covered on a new OEM set of paddles.