OP, I just compared Empire and Adco covers and the Adco SFS Aquashed seems to me best bang for the buck.
Heavy snow areas, I like a plastic tarp over the cover. Makes pulling snow off real easy and that keeps big icicles from building up on the fabric from 2’ of slowly melting snow.
Don’t believe that it will be “fine” without a cover. I mean, yeah it’s not going to fall apart next year or 5 or 10 years even, likely. But some people’s eyesight isn’t so good, just as some folks’ description of “looks great” isn’t so good either.