Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Best in class, by far. I am blown away at the sound quality of this little guy. Granted I haven't played in person the other brands of battery powered practice amps. I originally went in planning to buy the Marshall Mini stack, so I spent a lot of time watching many YouTube comparison videos with side-by-sides of several of them (Orange, Fender, Marshall, etc). After viewing the videos it was apparent to me the Blackstar sounded better. Many practice amps do not offer any effects (except the Roland Cube for triple the price!) but this one does- delay. You can adjust both the saturation/level and the time of the delay. "No reverb?" you might be thinking. Well, a high level of delay and a low time gives a good reverb effect, so don't fear, you can make reverb happen. Or, you can use a pedal. 2 channels, both are affected by the Gain and Volume knobs, as well as the delay and ISF (Blackstar's patented tone shifter). High Gain on the clean channel will distort, giving you from a fuzz up to a good overdrive sound, AC/DC style. OD channel w/ low Gain is clean (as you'd expect) up to a very good high gain sound. Great feedback when flicking muted strings with your pick like you'd expect from high gain. Rolling the volume back on your guitar will clean up the sound too...I seen that asked in the questions. Clean tones are very nice. Adding a little bit of delay to get a reverb-y sound with tone knobs rolled back on my guitar gets such a nice jazzy tone. It's crisp, polished, and better than I thought it'd sound on this. Using the MP3 line in renders the amp's volume knobs inactive. The amp plays as an extension speaker at whatever volume your device sends to it (you control the volume through your phone or tablet. etc). The knobs only control the guitar in jack. This is great! You can then jam along at whatever volume you want for either device, controlled separately. Now, it's 3W so it's loud for its size (by comparison the Marshall Mini stack is 1W). It sounds great, yes, but a small 3" speaker doesn't move much air. This is where a lot of people mistakenly think it's a toy. If you need to make this little guy move air, (you know, vibrate your shirt, rattle your windows) use Blackstar's "emulated output" to plug this into a PA...and there you go, concert sound moving tons of air. I've read a couple reviews here where people are complaining and comparing this to a regular sized amp. That's silly. It's a battery powered practice amp, but a DARN good one at that. Don't buy a pencil and then complain it's not a pen. I HIGHLY recommend getting the extension cabinet! If you can't afford it now, add it to your to-do list (that's what I did). It's not a gimmick. It literally doubles the volume (!) and adds spaciousness to the delay. It makes MP3s played via your phone/tablet through a 3.5mm jack come out in stereo! They double as computer speakers. LOUD! The stock batteries last hours! Longer than I expected to be honest. It comes with batteries too, so you can play right out of the box. The amp by itself comes with: Amp 6 pre-installed AA batteries. Backstar sticker Instruction book/manual. *Notice: NO 3.5mm cable, if you want to use this as an MP3 extension speaker, you'll need to pick up one of these, double male-ended. (They're cheap!) NO power adapter. Blackstar sells these separately for about $20 The extension speaker comes with: Speaker 24" cat5 cable spooled up on the back (to connect to main unit) Blackstar sticker Manual *Notice* The extension speaker does NOT require its own batteries.