This thing sounds sooooooo gooood! And for this prize.... And you just switch it on and it is there, turn some knobs and you got the 3 or 4 sounds you really need to be happy. Me at least, I don?t need more. Also important for me, it sounds the same on very low volumes like when you turn it up loud. What you can?t really say from tube amps. And it is still light enough to carry around easily and small enough to not overload the living room. The design could be better, but it is ok.
I also tried the Champion 20 and 40. They sound good, too, but this one sounds still better. The speaker is great and the newer sounds also, not only the cleans (good Fender cleans) but also very good Blues/Blues-Rock sounds on Crunch, Crunch+Overdrive and even a quite good ZZ-Top sound on British+Distorsion.
I also had that issue with the never ending hall effect that you can read about in many places. But I contacted Fender and it turned out that there is a simple software fix for it. So I sent the amp in to them and now it is fixed. Thomann told me that the newer series now comes already fixed. I only don?t understand why Fender took over one year to fix that stupid issue and allowed erroneous items to be sold for so long. Anyway, now it is fixed, and if you have an older one, just send it in to Fender.
Obviously an effects loop would have been great. But at this prize point difficult I guess. (I would pay some more for it, though.)
A great improvement would be to allow storing your sounds in presets and switch them up and down with the footswitch. This would make a real “Champion” out of it. Maybe for the next release....