So I'm starting this thread because for a while, the first year I owned the 228i from 2015-2016, there weren't many aftermarket choices for replacement wipers. Of course there was the OEM offerings but if I'm spending the money anyway I may as well find out what's out there. For reference as far as conditions I have lived in South Carolina since August of 2015 when I retired and moved back here. I bought my car in June of 2015 with 2700ish miles on it. It's a 05/2014 build car and was used as a loaner for someone who ordered new while I was in Germany until their car came in.
OEM:
The BMW wipers that came with my car were ineffective after about 9 months of use. I had them replaced at about the same interval through "free maintenance" at the dealer during an oil service. Those made it about 11 months until they wore out and started separating from the hard portion of the wiper itself. Wore out pretty early IMO but I did put a ton of miles on the car in a short amount of time. Always worked flawlessly as intended.
Bosch: $47/set @ Wal-Mart
I decided to replace the BMW OEM wipers with the Bosch ICON wipers that had just hit the market for the 2 series in the stock 22" (driver side) and 18" (passenger side) sizes. Installation was a bit complicated by the need to remove a bunch of different covers and add clips in order to work properly with the stock wiper arms. For this reason the wiper's had to slip onto the arm itself and the tension that was applied to the glass was lessened. The spring tension of the arm was lessened because the glass/arm angle was lessened. Worked well for about 14 months. They started to chatter on occasion and started to dry out I think. Compounded by the lessened pressure on the glass made it worse. They finally gave up last night. The contact portion of the wiper came detached from the wiper and started flopping around. Of course it was raining pretty hard when this happened all of a sudden.
Rain X: $57 @ Target
This time around there are many more wipers to choose from and I decided to go with the new Latitude series from RainX. Installation was pretty straight forward as the included instructions are well thought out. You have to remove 2 small cover/bracket items and the end of the wiper arm inserts into the wiper. By design the glass to wiper arm distance is greater than the Bosch wipers and contact with the glass is more pronounced as it is with the stock wipers. It was raining again today during this warm spell that just hit again, it was 69 degrees today. They work great so far and don't make a peep. We will see how long these last. I hit 68,097 miles today and it's time for other maintenance items as well
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What have you used?