I purchased a bunch of these, the command group, spearmen (well dwarves), and ones with two-hand axes. I quite like them, they are taller than my LoTR dwarves to be sure, but there's the tab under foot to factor in. So a bit tall dwarves if you use them with Gimli etc, but not too bad. You can reduce the difference by cutting the tab or similar, and painted up the difference won't leap at your face, I think?
They came with separate weapons and shields, and the spearmen poses are using the spear one-handed, so it's real easy to make a simple weapons swap and the poses still look good with one-hand weapons. Swords and Axes work nice here, I intend to use mostly other weapons than spears. Of course they released the bow/x-bow units right after my order...
The only downside for me was, that they only sell them in whole units of 8/16 (I think), so I got more dwarves I really wanted or needed. But the prices aren't bad either. About the beards, ok they're not long and flowing, but that's only practical with chain mail you know?