I don't consider myself a strat guy, but I wanted to try a strat style guitar and let me tell you, this guitar plays beautifully! The set up was great straight from the box, it sounds awesome and it's just fun to play.
The only negative is the bridge. There seems to be some kind of a problem with my bridge, I can't get my tremolo arm to fit in the bridge. This is not a problem if you don't really use a tremolo system.
If you want to see if a strat is for you but you don't want to spend a lot of money, this is it!