I have had my Tensor 5.0 for about two and a half years now, so I figure I can share what I have learned about this kite.

The Tensor is made by Prism, which is best known for extremely high quality performance stunt kites. The quality and engineering shows in their Tensor kites. The seams all are straight as a laser, and seem very strong. I have let a few newbies fly it to get a taste of wind power and it has seen its fair share of LE down impacts with no signs of wear or tear. It comes with a bar that has a kite killer running through it to the break lines. You can take the bar apart and convert it into handles with kite killers.

I highly recommend using handles over the bar setup with this kite because on the bar it needs the whole sky to loop. It can nearly turn on a wingtip when you add a bit of break to a turn on handles, though. The kite is very powerful, and will fly in very light wind.

It can be flown in zero wind with a bit of leg work. You can find youtube videos of people flying the Tensor 360 degrees around them in zero wind. It will stay up without much work at 5 mph, although it needs 8mph or more to skud in sand most of the time. The sweet spot for this kite is about 15 mph of steady wind. When you are in this sweet spot, the Tensor is the perfect example of an easily controlled, stable, gentle giant. Any less and it does not behave well at the edge of the window(backstalls and does not hold shape), and any more gives it the tendency to over fly and luff.

When you are flying in lighter winds, the kite needs slack brake lines unless performing a turn at speed, as it can sometimes stall fairly easily and slide back into the window only to power up on you immediately after. Be careful flying directly overhead in higher winds because the Tensor does not eat gusts well, and can sometimes generate unwanted lift.

Overall I would recommend the Tensor 5.0 as a good beginner big boy power kite, in spite of the flaws that I pointed out. My reasoning behind it is this: It could do a few things better, but at the price tag usually around $400, this kite will teach you a lot of valuable lessons about power kite behavior that will translate well to other kites in the future. I may have been a bit harsh in pointing out flaws, but I always enjoy flying it on a windy day, and that is what matters most