The bed length may be a deal breaker, but the price should not. This lathe should not be confused with 9 inch and 10k Southbends. It is the "heavy" 10 and has many features and accessories usually found on the likes of Hardinge lathes. UMD drive, taper attachment, micrometer saddle stop, heavy bed webbing, much nicer QC gear box with feeds as low as .0007 in !, QC collet changer and collets, 1 3/8 spindle bore, lots of tooling, and much more, this machine would cost over 20k new just recently before production was moved outside the states. A machine like this would only be a good decision if a purchaser had long term plans for it. They may be plentiful in some parts of the country but are hard to come by in the south east.
On another note, many shy away from a shorter bed lathe ( for cannon making ) because of the extra length needed to drill/ream/bore cannon barrels. There are many creative ways to jump this hurdle and still use a smaller lathe. The only reason I could think of that would make the size of it a deal breaker for me is if I was planning full production manufacturing, and in that case I would be shopping for a totally different machine like the Haas TL2 or TL3, now there's a cannon making machine. But the original poster inquired about a "beginners" lathe for someone just learning to turn metal. Most of the Taiwan junk on the market now has to be reworked before they can reliably cut metal, a frustrating experience for the beginner. Many loose confidence and give up when a good quality machine would have made the difference.
I find this to be true with musical instruments also.
A good quality well setup guitar is a joy to play, while a cheap one can kill your confidence especially when in the beginner phase.
Dewayne
