It's not, but for less than $200 more you can get an IC-7100 which seems to be better AND has a much larger display plus 2m and 440, if the odd form factor doesn't bother you (or it works for you so you like it.) Of course at these prices that's still nearly 50% more so that could be a big difference for a lot of people.
Cheap, compact, and lightweight are properties that don't equate to quality. I had an FT-891 for portable use and was pleased with it. Now that my infirmities made lugging an adequate battery around uncomfortable I had no problem selling the FT-891, it's battery operated tuner, and battery. I watched folks play with it at winter FD. They were pleased with it also. My idea of portable today is an MTR3B and a 9V transistor battery. Both fit in a shirt pocket! I only use the turboencabulator at my home shack.
It's a reference to this: That's the original. There are many that have been done since, including updates to this one and the Retro-Encabulator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator "The turboencabulator (in later incarnations the retroencabulator or Micro Encabulator) is a fictional machine whose technobabble description is an in-joke among engineers." I find these hilarious but not everyone does. In context, the comment meant that some people won't have a simple rig and insist on many fancy features, some of which are about as useless as this technobabble when you get right down to making contacts.
I know several people who love it for portable work, no way would I use it as a daily driver though with it's mind numbing menu
The 891 would make an excellent first rig for anyone new to the hobby and then when they get the cash together they could get a base rig and keep the 891 for portable work. The menus are a non issue for me because I am used to it now. It's a very small 100 Watt rig so they had to cram a lot in. Getting back to the transmitter "issues" I checked again last night, I went to the hack green SDR and full 100 watts and saw a perfectly clean waterfall so either Yaesu fixed this on later versions or rumours of people with too much mic gain or processor were correct, my ALC hardly moves and as far as I can tell it's perfectly clean. I've even asked a guy I talk to in France, mainly on digital, if my signal is splattering and he says it's clean. So if there are transmitter issues on the 891 it's probably down to the operator.
