I have always enjoyed kayaking and have been paddling for over 5-6 years now. Every time there was weekend plan for a beach or a river or any water body, I'd spend a lot of time looking up places where you could rent a kayak without having to go through the trouble of lugging it on top of my car. I also hated the fact that most of nice little remote, but beautiful spots for kayaking had no kayak rentals for miles! Hence, the search of a kayak of my own began a few weeks back and because of all the obvious reasons (portability, performance vis-a-vis other inflatables, the whole hybrid factor, space constraint to store a hard-shell and of course, affordability) - I zeroed in on the AE AdvancedFrame Inflatable Kayak.I got a good deal on Amazon.com - the whole package, 96" paddles, kayaking friendly PFD (life vest), AE dual-action hand pump along with the kayak so it made sense. No backbone.Sure enough, the entire stuff reached within 3 days of my ordering it. I was tracking it online so I made sure I left work a tad earlier so I could take it out for a quick test-run in river close by. Reading from reviews online, it made sense to set up the whole thing within the apartment once - so I don't spend time figuring things out in the open. Definitely a good idea and I familiarized myself with the whole process in about 15-20 minutes. Instructions are pretty comprehensive and it comes all assembled, just lay it out and inflate! After this I deflated the kayak and hauled it to the river nearby and in set it up again in under 10 minutes. I chose a spot with at least a 1 ft depth to launch my kayak so I can take the whole rocks/tree branches thing out of the equation.This thing is really stable, sturdy and the paddling experience - at least in a mild river, was pretty close to a hard-shell. The seat (without any additional cushion) is comfortable (max. I tried till now is 2 hrs or so). The ease of maneuverability and tracking is quite decent. Once I got in to a rhythm, the kayak moved very effortlessly. Overall experience on the first time on water - extremely positive!After waiting it out due to really windy conditions, I decided to take the kayak out on the same river but on a different stretch of water slightly down stream. The first thing I noticed was the choppy waters due to the wind and the rocky bottom at the launch site. The last thing I wanted was to damage the kayak or the tracking fin because of the rocks but then I decided to wade a couple of meters towards slightly deeper water before getting in to the kayak. Again, the AE AdfancedFrame kayak performed well in very strong winds and choppy waters. Of course, had I been in a hard-shell, am sure paddling against the wind would have been relatively easier but honestly, I don't think that's a fair comparison. Still, I guess the loss of performance could not be more than 15-20% at the most. Considering that it is NOT a hard-shell, that is perfectly acceptable to me. Now as I was nearing the shore to exit the kayak, I ran over some very nasty rocks that I could literally feel them underneath. Expecting the worst, when I turned the kayak over - there was absolutely no damage barring a few tiny surface scratches - which even a hard-shell would have suffered had it run over those rocks. Nothing at all in terms of any damage, which speaks volumes of the quality of the construction I believe. I had loads of fun once again.Observations,1) Make sure you get long-ish length paddles (96" / 230 cms or more)2) Get a pump with a gauge to make sure you don't over inflate the kayak chambers3) While this kayak is pretty sturdy, why launch it in a place with sharp rocks etc?4) The area behind the seat is decent to store stuff but I can see the utility of a deck-bag5) The life vest (PFD) should allow good arm movement - greatly affects overall experienceThis seems like a very good buy based on the first 2 runs and I am now really looking forward to the summer :)