I have leaf guard gutters on my barn (right under pine trees) and they do their job very well. They perform like normal gutters as long as it's a moderate to heavy rain. For drizzle and light rain, there is still a lot of dripping over the edges. But they are immune to leaves and pine needles and overall do their job.
On our home, I only have gutters above our front sidewalk and porch steps. They are regular half-round gutters. I had used foam gutter inserts to keep the leaves out, and they mostly work well. However, after 2-3 years, they get clogged with fine debris and loose gravel from the shingles, and eventually they plug up so bad I need to remove them and clean them, which is no small chore. This spring, after they clogged up and swamped our porch with water, I removed them and never put them back in. Every 1-2 weeks in autumn, I have been manually blowing out those gutters. I rigged up a 1" PVC pipe about 10' long that reaches up and over the gutters, and hook that up to the "blow" port on my shop vac. Works surprisingly well to blow leaves and pine needles out of the gutter from a position on the ground.
Today I was on the roof with a leaf blower blowing leaves off our back porch roof (if they accumulate next to the house wall, it can overflow the edge flashing in a heavy rain) and just went around front to blow out the front gutters. Leaves have been falling so thick lately, I bet you won't even know I did anything in another day or two.
I am tempted to try screen-type gutter guards up front, but know darn well they will be a magnet for pine needles. Probably work fine for leaves though.
