Mooer Hornet 15i Modeling Amp White

So, I would describe myself as a beginner to intermediate acoustic player - and am trying out electric guitar. I have used a Mooer headphone effects amp previously, but wanted my first proper practice amp. There are a bewildering number of amps out there and I chose the Mooer simply because of previous experience and the spec, on paper looked ideal for me.

This is a nice looking unit in white. Only one control on the front (on/off/volume/press to change to a preset). It's a nice compact size - not tiny, but will fit on a bookshelf. It's pretty solid and heavy, maybe around 4kg.

The unit is controlled by the Mooer iamp app which you download onto your phone. It connected straight away by Bluetooth. The app gives you a huge number of different amps to choose, or if you simply want to play a particular style, you can choose from lots of different styles (e.g. Blues, Jazz) instead - I use this option as I haven't got a clue about amps at this stage. However, if you want you can completely model any guitar sound with a "workflow" which incudes od, amp, dyna, mod, delay and reverb - each of which has a load of parameters to fiddle about with. The app also has (user tools option) a tuner, metronome and drum machine - so I've been using these tools to help improve my timing and speed.

To my ears, the sound is lovely from this amp - I can get some nice full, mellow tones. It has 15w, and so far I have only had the amp on about 3 - which is loud enough for me to worry about the neighbours - so volume won't be an issue!

All in all, it's a great amp and at a very reasonable price - it's so simple to use as a beginner and has such a nice sound that time flies when you are practicing! I'm sure there are lots of features I haven't noticed or used yet, which is the nice thing about the amp, plenty to explore when you are ready to, but easy to get up and running straight away.

Note for UK shoppers - it was supplied only with a Euro plug, so you'll need to find a C5 to UK plug mains lead with an appropriate rated fuse. Delivery to UK from Thomann very quick, and very well packed.

Yes, it's a cheap amp, but I wouldn't recommend it for practicing on overdriven sound. The compression is too unnatural and feels delayed. For clean playing, it seems OK.
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1. All overdriven sounds are bad — they're just compressed mayhem
2. It doesn't feel like a real amp at all, in my humble opinion, but the dynamics feel unnatural
3. Top-mounted power input. Who decided to make this? Annoying
4. You can only control the settings via the Bluetooth app, which is also a drawback.

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1. Nice looking
2. Has built-in tuner and other things

I bought this for my kid, but it's an uninspiring and strange amp for practicing.