I bought this instrument in order to play along at the local Irish evenings at the local youth house. I have earlier played mandolin at school, and at concerts, so I have knowledge about the instrument, both playing and the care taking of it.
I bought the instrument hoping that the low price would produce an ok sound, unfortunately, I was wrong.
The first problem occurred almost immediately after unpacking; the tailpiece fell off just from lifting the poor instrument. Granted it's not necessary in order to play, but it's still saddening.
Secondly, the strings are almost impossible to tune, and the E string closest to my knee keep bursting at B, even though I've bought several new strings and had experts trying to attach the string properly. To be quite frank, I would have had a better result building one myself.
The sound is fairly good on the tuneable strings, and the pickup is surprisingly good for an instrument of this price range. If you are lucky enough to get a playable instrument, this could be a pretty good sounding one. Alas, I got one that can't be used for chords, but I used the G-strings to get a drone for a medieval themed song. In the end, however, I put it up on the wall in my brother's room, as a rather expensive piece of furniture.
To summarize: I got a really bad instrument, that would cost more to fix, than the cost of buying a new one, and I am way too introverted and lazy to send it back for repairs/getting a new one.
However. I have confidence that a version of this that can be tuned properly could sound rather good. It's a roulette, so to say.