We’ve nearly been there for just over two months and I can think of no downsides. At the moment, the commute from Bangor takes about twenty minutes (leaving the house at 7 am) and the commute home takes about forty minutes (leaving at 4:20 pm). In short my commute time has effectively halved.
Living five minutes stroll from the beach and a twenty minute walk from the centre of Bangor has proved itself a couple of times. It’s just more convenient. I’ve not had to use the public transport network here (not in about 13 years to be honest) but I’m told it’s perfectly adequate.
My broadband did get sorted and apart from the odd line drop where I can’t get attached to Sky’s servers for authentication or DHCP, it’s been fast with a 384 Kbit upload and a 6.8 Mbit download. Getting those speeds is relatively regular as well though the latency can be a little high at times.
There are a few things I miss. A local B&Q. A local Maplin. But there’s pretty much everything else and decent enough facilities for kids, a heap of new eateries that we can try out and the only RPG book shop in the province as well. There’s a spacious play park around the corner in addition to the beach and a nice view (if you take the seafront route) on the way home from town.
I just need to figure out how to remove the commute and change the day job for everything to be perfect.