Harley Benton HB-20R

I bought this for my HB ST-20 HSS guitar.
Main purpose was to be able to play backing tracks for practicing songs from guitar learning apps, but in reality this little beast could easily fill a pub with great sound and has a lot more to it, than just giving you the option of peacticing in the shed... Of course it has it's limitations in all aspects, but hey, it's a 75€ amp...and for that price it does way more and way better than some more expensive "big branded" amps.

Materials used are just perfect for the price.
Quality of the sound is WAY better than I expected it to be.
Standby mode is a bit annoying, but that's a feature of all HB amps as far as I know.
Distorted sounds are also of good quality.

I understand price limits the range of options it can offer, and it alreqdy gives more than one would expect, but few effects would have been nice 😅

All in all I'd give it a solid 5 stars.
Thank you Thomann, great product.
I would recommend for any beginner!

I can't believe how bloody loud this thing is, wholly overkill for me on so many levels. Highly recommend as a beginner amp 11/10

I've been told to always set volume on max for tuning purposes, I accidentally hit the G string and my heart almost jumped out of my rib-cage. I've been told this is normal and that 20W isn't even that much

I've also been told I *need* to buy a combo for practice and I have to say I agree (even though initially I agreed only reluctantly), but I can see this thing could work at a small club concert, you can probably juice out that much out of this. I can even see this being a good backup solution in case your main amp is MIA

Aside from the loudness the What-Brand Chinesium speaker this ships with isn't exactly an audophile's dream. I should clarify, the sound is great, for 60 euros it's, I mean, I couldn't imagine this level of quality 10, 20 years ago at this price level. Still you should know, anything through the aux input is going to sound dulled? ie. not bad, but not great either

Guitar sounds great of course, I mean great as in unexpectedly good for transistor. I actually greatly prefer the *actual sound* through headphones/an external speaker over aux cable. The difference is noticeable even for an amateur like me

I keep the volume knob at 1-2-4 at most, and strangely I prefer the clean sound. I intuitively believed that if you're gonna have a cheap speaker then distorted sound would sound better since you know... it's distorted and the nuances of the sound are lost. But this didn't turn out to be true in the real world and clean sound has much more "body", it feels more plentiful and vibrant. Remember kids, keep your gain low. Signed: someone who is not an expert

EQ works differently than I expected, but I've been told this is exactly how these things ought to work so yeah

Let's quickly address points made by other reviewers:
- build quality is... I just can't give it all of the stars without feeling like lying. It's amazing for the price. The logo is very well machined. It will probably last I don't know, let's say 10 years. But just... 5% more effort would make this combo look and feel so much better, dare I say premium even. There was one bolt that wasn't fully tightened. This might've happened during travel, but then I'm afraid what kind of travel conditions this was in. Also on the back there's a strange black paint applied? I don't know if this is normal, you'll see if you buy it, I'm neutral towards it
- the two buttons and all knobs are good quality, the lines below are slightly misaligned though and it's triggering the perfectionist nerves in me. Just very *slightly* so, just barely [screaming inside]. I think these are the same knobs from the higher-end models
- the jack seems to be good enough to last a lot of connecting in/out
- handle feels goood, I approve
- reverb sounds amazing except for positions 5 through 9.5-ish. Still you probably should stick to 1-3-4 anyway. 9.5-10 sounds good

Let's start with the most important thing: For the money, it's great. It is a powerful amplifier that can be used at living-room volumes, it has a headphone jack and even built-in spring reverb, a looked-after feature. It's a good option for a first amplifier as I've found it to take pedals in front quite nicely (mind it doesn't have an effects loop so any pedals will need to be put in front) and its own overdrive is all right for a beginner to get you in the ballpark of rock.
However, there are a few less likeable features about it.
First off, The on-board overdrive is not by a long shot as good as I would like it to be, it lacks dynamics, sounds very harsh and artificial and when the knob goes above halfway it doesn't get dirtier, instead it only ads noise without distorting the guitar. My recommendation is to get an overdrive pedal to go along with it, a cheap one will undoubtedly be better than what's on board.
Secondly, the MP3 input lacks a serious function: Remaining quiet. Whenever it doesn't have a signal from another device, it hums like crazy. Also, it doesn't like to be quiet: It wants to be loud.
And thirdly, although this is just me nit-picking, the reverb gets noisy rather quickly. The amplifier doesn't have the best shock-resistance ever so me walking around creates a little noise from the springs wobbling. Do keep in mind that I have quite a heavy step and this might not be an issue for you, but it is a downside in my opinion.
To conclude: If you want to sit in a chair and plug pedals into it, go for it. If you want a cheap solid-state amplifier that will last you, go for it. If you expect it to get crunchy metal tones, it won't, though it does do cleans quite nicely.