Boring story short, I used to test tyres; one thing that hasn't really changed is that cheap brands are still just that, cheap. I wouldn't fit half of the brands mentioned to my car, I'd rather drive home on the rim!!
Tyre shops are on spivs, i.e. the more they sell of a given brand the less they ultimately pay for that tyre so it's in their interest to tell you that a cheap tyre is "almost as good" as a branded tyre; they're not, from the tread design, rubber compound, belting quality, all the way down to carcass rigidity and everything else in between. There's a reason these tyres are cheap and in the trade they're called ditch-finders. On a side note, it's amusing when people in the UK say that the tyre isn't great in the wet, when in reality that's where it'll spend most of its time; tyre testing was about 80% wet time, 20% dry as it's quite easy to make a cheap tyre handle reasonably well in the dry. However, it's impossible to make a ditch finder handle in the wet as the money saved on the tyre is almost always taken from this part of the design work.
Don't take advice like this from a forum, or a review site, use reviews from people who know what they're testing for, i.e. Auto Express, as those are generally accepted within the industry. So, ignore me, but I use Continental 6s on my BMW and TT, but because of the odd size on my 4g (and the desire to keep it standard sizing like you) I've used NOS Continental 2s. I have tried the Rainsports on my Accord Type R, very good in the wet, not bad in the dry, so depending on where you are and what the weather's like, I'd have a think about these.
Oh, and semi-slick in the wet doesn't necessarily mean poor handling, I had the Toyos on quite a few test cars that did the 'ring and whilst there's less grip, grip loss is far more progressive and therefore easier to control. A good wet tyre and a great wet tyre isn't about the ultimate grip level, it's about what happens to the feedback when grip is gradually lost.
