I was also concerned about the move to electric-assisted steering. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the steering on my 2013 550i. It's about as heavy as it was my 2007 X5, which is pretty good. Feedback is decent. On the other hand, the steering doesn't have the same feedback or as heavy of a feeling as in a 1-series or 3-series. All said, however, the EPS was not a deal-killer at all for me.
For what it's worth, Car & Driver did an EPS v. HPS comparo of the 528i xDrive (EPS) against the 535i xDrive (HPS) and, in a blind test, actually preferred the EPS.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features...n-test-feature Kind of ironic given how they've panned the EPS on the new Bimmers!