Harley Benton CST-24T Vintage Sunburst

My only other guitar is the Squier 70s Thinline Tele. I bought this mostly to have another one to play around with, and for the different specs (24 frets, vibato, split coils), and maybe it's because that one's a bit older, but I'd say this beats it in several categories for less money.

Build
The body is well put together and doesn't seem to have any glaring flaws in the finish (though there is a barely perceptible scratch from the "push-pull" cardboard tag I can't unsee). I didn't exactly buy it for the looks, but the sunburst looks better IRL, if a bit tacky.

Playability
The neck is pretty slim and comfortable (for me), and access up to the 19th fret is good, but the neck juts a bit into your hand above that. A problem is the frets poke out a fair bit on the thumb side. It's not noticeable to me, but it might need filing. The frets also feel a bit "scratchy" to play, though maybe it just needs a polish and oiling. That aside, it is quite easy for me to pull off bends and pull-offs, especially in the higher frets.

Hardware
The tuners feel fairly solid. Better than my Squier Tele. More solid and responsive; on the Tele I would sometimes have to wiggle it back and forth before it would tune properly, but not here. The knobs aren't too stiff or sloppy, the pots are responsive, and the pickup selector is good. The jack is annoying, though. I've plugged it in ten times and it's come loose twice, though that's not unusual.

As for the vibrato or "trem", I've never used one, but I wanted this for slight warble effects and to adjust chords while I'm playing them. I haven't spent much time figuring out how to adjust it, but I have it fairly "tight", and it stays in tune with bends and vibrato fairly consistently.

Sound
I'm not going to be able to tell you too much. It sounds like a guitar. I would say the pickups are good, if a bit "growly" for my tastes. When I flip to the bridge, with high gain it sounds very brittle with the tone knob on full, and on the neck it sounds a bit dark with it below a "7"-ish. The volume also cuts off the treble a bit steeply and doesn't get that quiet even on low.

That's not to say it sounds bad or lacks tonal variety. I do think you can get some really solid sounds here if you play around with the controls, you just have to use the tone knob. The split pickups sound really nice, especially together, but I do prefer the bridge humbucker for most tones. I got a capacitor in case I want to do a treble bleed mod or cap swap, but I don't think I need to right now.

Overall
Again, really solid guitar. I'm just going to recap the major cons

-loose jack
-frets can poke your hand
-pickups need a little coaxing to sound their best

Most of those can be fixed, anyway, so I'd say it's worth the money.