The store manager of my local GC today said the color coated strings are nothing but a gimmick and that the coating comes off in a short time, along with that the color coating effects the sound in a bad way...
The Optima strings don’t seem to be “color-coated”: it’s actual gold plating of some type. Supposedly one of their benefits is that they last a long time.
I had another used bass that came with black color-coated strings, and wow those felt and sounded awful. Like plastic was all over the strings.
My kalium are not cheap but not rediculous either. Coated strings sucked, my pick atrack stripped them at the first rehearsal, felt/sounded weird. No coated for me.
If you want to count flat wounds then the highest price I've seen are Thomastik-Infeld George Benson signature strings at $37-$40 a set. The regular round wound T-I strings are around $20-$23 a set.