I will share my opinion to give you another perspective as I have one of the very first AT's delivered.
- I have not spent any money on crash bars except for handguards
- I find it very agile on dirt roads and plenty of throttle response
- I have an easy time riding it on the road even on Knobby tires
- I find it pretty easy to maintain and work on
- I have crashed it at 45 mph and broke a fairing that some zip-ties fixed/stitched back together
- As a tall fella, I have put risers on it as well as a Scotts dampener on it and it rides just fine
Mine is a 2016 manual with no frills, no fancy lights, no panniers, no crash bars and it rides well as long as you tell it what to do as it is a heavy bitch. I have about 12K miles on it with about 75% of that being dirt.
Hopefully this helps!