Squier Affinity Strat Laurel SG

I'm a big fan of Fender Stratocasters, but I couldn't afford to buy one, so I decided to get this Squire Affinity.
I will divide my impressions into points:
1. The appearance of the guitar, in fact the color is much softer and more pleasant in reality, I really liked it, also the lacquered head of the guitar with a vintage design and the laurel pickguard go together elegantly.
2. The quality of workmanship and assembly of the guitar, in this regard I was a little disappointed, there are several reasons, the fretboard was very dirty and dried out, the first thing I did was remove the strings (by the way, the stock ones are simply terrible) and cleaned the fretboard and then treated it with lemon oil. The tuners seem to be quite cheap, they work unevenly, some are smoother, others are stiff, tuning the guitar is problematic, I think it’s definitely worth replacing the tuners. The frets are unpolished and have some minor gaps. On the positive side, the painting is done with high quality, for this price there are excellent pickups, chrome fittings, the weight of the guitar is very pleasant.
3. Sound, I think that having spent this small price on a squire guitar, I got exactly what I needed, I think that the money was well spent.
If you love Fender, Stratocasters and want to enter the world of music, I am sure this guitar will be very useful for you, I recommend you buy it.

Positives
Paint finish and hardware is fantastic. Can't find a blemish on it.
Electronics all work perfectly.
The minimal finish on the neck provides no resistance, for fast movement up and down the neck.
Held tuning ok, with stock machines heads / nut work.
Not too heavy, kind of a medium weight Strat at 7 lb 6.5 oz (3.3 kg)

Issues
Fretwork not great, it needed a fret dress to get a useable action for me (2 mm / 1.7mm)
After I tightened the whammy bar springs, the bridge studs started to lift. I decided to get my tech to fix this, instead of returning. They had to be plugged, re-drilled and fitted properly.

Hopefully the bridge issue is not consistent among all of these, but I've never had a problem with Thomann taking back defective products, if you decide to return it.

I ended up upgrading the guitar to a 1 humbucker Tom Delonge style strat. The scratchplate holes lined up really close to the Fender hole spacing, so ideal for modding.

Machine head holes are 10 mm, so will fit modern style machine heads (I upgraded them to locking, for each of use)

If it didn't have the issue with the bridge, I'd have given it 4 stars.