I am in a unique position since a colleague/writing partner of mine has one from the first production series with a different (earlier Fishman) piezo system. I was really suspicious at first, but I had a chance to actually test one before making the purchase. I really liked the guitar a lot. It seems that my writing partner got a good specimen. I didn't.
The factory strings on mine were Elixir Nano Web 016 - 022 - 030 - 047 - 059 - 070 making this relatively hard to play and sound almost brash acoustically. C standard tuning with the factory strings is creating serious tension. Anything below B seems to be working better. I strongly recommend restringing the guitar with Daddario EJ18 (014 - 018 - 027 - 039 - 049 - 059), but replacing the 059 with Daddario PB070 as my partner did. One can go to drop-A#/C-standard with that set without sacrificing playability and clarity.
I don't expect the finish or build quality to be perfect at this price range, but I would expect a decent fret job at least. The fret-ends on mine needed serious work. The bridge set-up was horrible with the strings riding really high above the 12th fret. This is easy to fix, but to buy a 299 e acoustic, which is borderline unplayable was not what I had in mind. The Harley Benton "quality control" dropped the ball on this one, both at the factory and at the warehouse. The neck, especially in acoustic guitars, can move in transition during winter, but mine was crooked beyond description. Machine heads seem to be pretty solid and this one does keep in tune.
This sounds what you would expect an acoustic at this price range to sound. The Fishman Sonicore pickup and Fishman Isys+ Preamp sound actually pretty good.