Thanks for all the opinions.
We'll be considering budget and whether paying more is worth it or not but mostly taking a hard look at what we want aesthetically for the counters.
I suppose if we find granite has too much variation then we'll tend towards the manufactured quartz instead.
If we really want to dumb down the price we could go with Corian too. We installed that in my mother's house and so far it has been pretty solid stuff. Haven't seen any colours in that lineup to our liking though.

"Those who preach the myths of audio are ignorant of truth."