Harley Benton HBMA-50E Mandoline BK

When i first got the mandolin i would say i was pleasantly suprised. I think the colour and finish of the body was bright, and it had a fair amount of depth.
The hardware, mainly the tuning pegs feel and look a little cheap, but they do the job. I'm sure you could upgrade these if you really wanted to.
Whilst tuning the top e strings they broke, on both Harley Benton Mandolins i have bought. I urge anyone buying one to invest in at least 2 sets of spare strings, as i think there is a high chance of strings breaking , when you first tune. If you don't you'll probably wish you did, when it does break. There are some Martin strings @ around 5 euro, so it's not going to break the bank.
I would like Thomann to ship with better strings, and just charge a couple more euro, to save hassle and time changing strings. I guess the only positive thing about the strings breaking was that it made me change strings, investigate the instrument, take off tailpiece,basically get to know the instrument more than i would have done.
I think the acoustic sound of the mandolin is pretty good. Quite woody, and sparkly, especially when the strings were changed.
The amplified tone of the instrument is again not bad. I plugged in and played into my soundcard without issue. As it's a passive pick up the gain has to be turned up lots, but that's to be expected.
Overall i would say for the price it is pretty good. I don't think it's fair to compare this to mandolins which cost 5 or 10 times as much. Of course they will be 'better'. One problem i have had with both mandolins is the tailpiece keeps falling off. It was really annoying. To solve the problem i put tailpiece on the ground, and hammered it on the edges/side, to close it up, and now it's super tight and not going anywhere.
I think if you want to try out a mandolin, and don't want to break the bank doing it, this is a good product to start with.

PROS_Cheap, not bad acoustic tone, good introduction to mandolin....
CONS_Tailpiece constantly falling off, bad strings, cheap hardware.....

I am a guitar player and this is my first mandolin after ~20 (gosh!) years of playing. I never even tried one before, so my opinions are purely related to this specific instrument as I have no benchmark.

I am in love with the instrument, it sounds nice, bright and loud acoustically, I can't keep my hands off it. The string height can be adjusted, which is something i didn't expect on such a inexpensive instrument, and I have to say that I'm pretty impressed because you can get pretty low without buzzing! Neck relief can be adjusted too, but I didn't really need to adjust it on my instrument.

I haven't tried the pickup yet, but I guess it's a plain simple single coil, there might be some hum but come on, I won't play this mandolin with distortion (or will I?)
Frets' edges are a bit sharp, but nothing to really prevent you from playing and have fun. The scale is so short that my hand covers 10 frets, there's no real need of sliding back and forth that much. Also, the neck is so thin that your hands won't be as "tightly wrapped" around it as on guitar. Higher price instruments will probabily have a better fret job, but as far as I am concerned, this instrument is brilliant.

I've been a celtic bouzouki player for a decade now and I've always considered getting a cheap mandolin to use as a "half-instrument" while traveling and having fun outside.

Recently, I needed a mandolin for a very specific project and I quickly settled on this one. I'm so glad I did!

It has great construction, lovely curves, it's made of real solid wood, and sounds absolutely fantastic! I was very impressed with the color and finish, too - it only has the smallest of flaws that took me days to notice. For the price, that's just amazing to see. Good job, Harley Benton!

PROs: Great playability, great construction, awesome sound.
CONs: The usual things for the price class - imperfect factory setup, soft bridge prone to chipping, one tuner is harder to turn than the others. Nothing major to worry about!

One bigger complaint I have has to do with the pickup, which is very noisy and not that loud, making it practically unusable for my needs. But again, for that price, I can't fault HB. I'll change it with a better one in the future if I feel like it.

All in all, I highly recommend this beautiful mandolin. It's good for beginners or people like myself who just want to take an instrument outside without worrying about its size or fearing they'll accidentally bump it somewhere. All of the joy, none of the fuss.

If you're on the fence - don't be, just get it and enjoy!