Love this bike. I´ve had it about two months and have just about broken it in. It´s got it all. Great power. Great looks. Great affordable price. My friends who own Harley-Davidsons are impressed with its power and looks. I ride it to work and cruise with it. Beginner bike- fine - call it what you want it is a total keeper as far as I´m concerned. How much power do you actually use? This thing is a brute and can keep up with any motorcycle alive. This If you want to go kill yourself going 150 mph on public highways then fine. The Vulcan 500 is so well engineered it can blow away bikes with twice the power away in a drag race if that´s what you really worry about. But I don´t think thats what riding is about anyway. And I consider that a 500cc bike years ago was very big. This bike does anything a rider would want it to do. Chicks dig it just fine too. You can´t imagine what these buddies of mine with 30,000 dollar Harleys are thinking when they see me riding right up there with them looking just as good, when they have these big payments to make every month -and I bought this 5000 dollar machine cash w/ no payments and have better reliability and way better gas mileage on top of all that! You can´t go wrong with this one! -