Feature:
The two-piece alder body produces some good tone and doesn´t break your back unless you happen to be a ridiculously weak child. I personally love the setup of three single-coil pickups. The neck is smooth and extremely playable. Slides are no problem if your strings aren´t rusted through. The curved fretboard makes bar chords a breeze, but causes some of the crappier capoes to fail, which is why you buy a nice capo if you use them a lot. The white pickguard on a blue body looks pretty cool. The tuners work excellently and actually stay in tune if you stretch the strings properly. The two tone pots really make a difference to the tone. I absolutely love all the features this guitar comes with.

Quality:
The worst parts of this guitar are the strap buttons. They get a little loose after about 4 years in a case. I put in some longer screws so they stay secure. It worked. The quality control isn´t the best in their Mexican factory, but that´s why there are blemished items, and these guitars are less expensive in the first place. I don´t have a backup because there is absolutely no need for one. This guitar is very sturdy, and I´d have absolutely no problem taking mine on the road with me, because it´s built like a rock. I´ve dropped it, hit it on stuff, nearly broke the headstock off by hitting it on a wall. It still works wonderfully and looks ridiculously awesome.

Value:
If I could rate this an 11, I would want to rate it a 12. Seriously, there´s no way you could stop me from getting another one if mine were stolen or lost (broken is out of the question, that´s just not going to happen).

Desirability:
Stratocasters look friggin´ awesome! These things have an amazingly genius design. I want to find out where Leo Fender is buried so I can thank him properly for inventing this guitar.

Sound:
The classic Strat tone is a classic for a reason. With the right rig, you can get an extremely sharp, twangy, trebly tone with just enough twang. I use a Live Wire cable and a Crate GX-15 amp for this. By simply replacing the cable with a low-end Monster and adding a Distortion pedal to the line, you can get a fuller, more defined, more balanced tone, all with the stock pickups. I use the bridge pickup for the trebly Strat tones, and when I want a full, humbucker sound and don´t have a dual-humbucker guitar around, I just set it to position 2 (neck-middle pickups) and mash go on my distortion pedal. These guitars sound almost exactly like the real American ones, for $600 less.

Ease of Use:
As stated in ¨Features¨, this guitar is very playable. The neck is smooth and the perfect size for an average hand size. Getting great sounds out of a great guitar is easy. Plug it into an amp, turn it on, and play. You may want to EQ it, and mess with the tone knobs a little bit to get an even better sound. In any case, it´s hard to get a bad tone out of a Fender guitar.

Overall:
I expect to be satisfied with this guitar forever, but I´ll need a guitar with dual humbuckers to get that specific tone. But all in all, if I had to do a whole nationwide tour with only one electric guitar, I´d pick a Strat.