Eggbeater Pedals.. Any good?

I hated them. I found it really difficult to easily engage the cleat. Not my bag at all. Looked cool though.

I'm looking at the Candy 2 model myself. Same boat as you, 540g Shimano SPD bugging me. Especially when I have a 96g stem and spent too much on 1500g wheels.

If I were you, I'd look there as well. . The Eggbeater has a much smaller surface area, translating into energy lost when compared to using a platform.

The downside I've heard is that it is less tight a pedal.

I use candys, same mech as eggbeater but with a small platform too. I find them to be a great all round pedal to use on all my bikes. I too have found that they would fall apart after about a year's use (10,000k), but they are easily rebuilt with a cheap rebuild kit.

They have supposedly recently redesigned their pedals (apart from the cheapest 'one' models) to address this problem, but I have yet to put in enough miles on my new candy 2s to verify this.

xt or xtr spds ... ??

In my experience, almost everything is better than SPD.
I have been using eggbeaters on my MTB and CX bikes for a couple of years now and I will not go back. The only possible option would be to switch to e.g. Time pedals.

I've had no problems whatsoever with my 3 pairs of eggbeaters.

there's plenty of evidence out there that they are prone to incredibly poor bearing life and also catastrophic failure including axles suddenly snapping
the design of the pedal means the springs can also eat into the soles of your shoes if you don't use a protective plate under the cleat

however there are those that love them for their light weight and mud clearing abilities and say bearing issues aren't a problem if you look after them

it's the one bike component i advise people to avoid