What's being 'slept on' here is that this is by far the best value stainless steel fermenter available anywhere. Per gallon, plastic fermenters are about half the price as these stills and any comparable stainless fermenters are 5x the price. Steel thickness and quality is about what you'd expect and need: it's thin but properly sealed, so handle with care.
The top has two ports that can be plugged with two bungs and airlocks, or one could be used for a separate tool like a thermometer etc. and I might fit mine with something like a dip tube for transferring.
As a still it seems adequate but I'd run it slow since the knockdown/cooling/condensing power looks imprecise, plus the thin steel could warp with a big temp gradient. I'd also avoid the thumper versions because they add an implosion risk and really have no benefits on this scale. I'm sure you can distill with it, I just wouldn't expect anything superb or easily done, but you can't beat the price for an all in one entry to distilling.
The thermometer placement is not ideal because it is in the boiler. It'd be better to have it at the point of no return for the vapor path, like right where the worm connects. That being said, with this still I don't think temp readings would really matter since you'd want to run it as hot as possible with as much cooling power as possible to knock down absolutely any vapor hitting the worm. These big stills would be great for stripping runs to create low wines for a more precise still.
TSkallagrimsson 
