My third-hand Harley Benton came to me with steel strings (decent quality, I think, definitely not the stock ones) but I swapped the G for an Innovation Honey, as an experiment. It sounds good to my unqualified ears, certainly more gut-like than the steel. It can't claim that it sounds radically different, but then my EUB is very much at the cheap and cheerful end of the market - and my playing equally basic - so a better instrument and player might deliver a bigger contrast.
I think I have read on this forum that synthetic strings are good for pizz, and some are clearly designed for slap, but some are not so good for arco. So it might depend on what you want to play.
Ordering a single string seems like a good way of experimenting, given the cost of a full set of strings.