It is the bare minimum A1C that is considered controlled

What an A1C of 7.0% will do for you is "delay but not prevent" diabetic complications for about 10 years but you will still likely develop vascular disease, retinopathy, neuropathy, dementia and kidney deterioration "to some degree" depending on your age and duration of disease

An A1C of 6.5% will mostly take the kidney disease, dementia and blindness off the table but still likely to develop neuropathy and have about a 80% chance to ultimately succumbing to a vascular disorder with congestive heart failure being most common

An A1C of Sub-6.0% takes all the diabetic complication "risks" off the table and gives you the best chance of seeing life expectancy with continued good function and quality of life

Most Doctors tend to be "happy" with a 7.0% because almost 70% of diabetics are over that at any given time

Only you can decide how hard you want to work, how willing you are to medicate and make the lifestyle changes you would need to make but you should at least "know" the likely outcomes for different A1C targets and the medical community falls pretty short of impressing that on patients - they don't want to upset or depress people by telling them that "bad stuff will still happen 100% of the time" if you don't get really serious about control