Metal sounds are of the expected Engl quality, and clean sounds surprisingly go from crystal clear, through glassy, to a lovely edge of breakup, through crunch, to a good heavy rock tone with lots of separation of the sound of the individual strings.
Build quality is the best I have seen of Marshall, Orange, Engl, or anyone else. Built like a tank but weighs very little indeed.
On board effects are just a bonus, but I find I flip them on more often than not, especially when playing clean. When using outboard effects, the amp seems to respond well without crank and in the 20 w mode. The metal tones need nothing added at all.
The 1w mode really does give a pretty good sound - better than anything else I've heard at that volume. Obviously 5 w is better, and at 20 w, this thing come alive!