I bought a fender squier deluxe strat a few years back and played about 6 or 7 of them before settling on the one i bought. on a few of them the fretwork was so bad they were unplayable. a few were average quality and the one i ended up with was probably that one in ten guitar with quality much better than the $250 price tag.
If you dont quite know what to look for when inspecting guitars, id suggest taking along someone who can help. Also, guitars in that price range and some even alot higher in price tend to have a bad factory setup, therefore making it even harder to guage playability.
