Any intro-level road bike with drop bars nowadays is an incredibly good value. You get 98% of the performance of the 5k bikes, and now, they even look sharp enough to hold their own against the Cervelos / etc. out there.

I'm pretty sure that Shimano purposely avoids reselling the Sora and 2200/2300 intro-level component specs widely because it would kill their margin, since they work so well. Far better to propagate the myth that you 'need' 105+ components.

Also note that if Sora/2200-2300 was so bad, they wouldn't be shipping it on all their intro road bikes, which are specifically aimed to get people more serious about spending more coin on their next bike.