Brilliant (re)introduction to RC cars as a hobby. I've been out of it for about a decade and things have come a long way.
Let's start with power - Using the "2 Cell Pro" battery package - Perfect for a beginner - all the pros that nitro cars had for beginners back in 2005 without any of the cons! You will want a wide open space though or be careful with the trigger, it has a silly amount of power. On gravel the car will happily light up all 4 tyres at pretty much any speed if you suddenly jump on the power. There's a tiny bit of hesitation from stationary but then it just goes - don't stand behind it when you do this, it will flick mud and gravel and all sorts up to about face height! Battery life is also decent with the 4500mAh packs. The charger included in the "Pro" package will get take them from storage charge to "ready" in about 30 minutes which is super convenient.
Electrics - they seem fine to me. The radio is a bit simple, but it works without dropping out and is responsive enough for bashing. Remove the battery after a really mucky run and the car can be cleaned in the shower! Unplug the ESC cooling fan if you run it in very wet conditions, it doesn't like water on the fan. The rest though is fine!
Body - It's a fairly generic short course truck, not super pretty but it looks good going along with the suspension working hard to keep it planted. If you wanted to get jumping this you would want to cut some holes in it to let the air out, or it will "parachute" a fair bit and fly weird. It gets very brittle in sub-zero conditions so crashing in the snow will shatter bits off it. There's ways to reinforce bodies, but now the weather's warmer it has stopped degrading as quickly despite some pretty violent crashes.
Chassis - durable and simple to work on. Haven't yet had any breakages but have hit a few trees and posts faster than I really wanted! Oil filled shocks with metal end caps are a nice touch, and they don't have threaded bodies to adjust preload but at least there are spacers provided to allow some basic suspension tuning. There's also a decent range of positions available to mount the shocks to the arms (plastic) and the turrets (metal). The steering can jam on debris kicked up by the tyres if it lands in the chassis tub wrong, but it is no bother to get a twig to free the steering back up. I might drill the chassis there to help avoid binding. The battery cover is also a bit fiddly, the car comes with a piece of foam to help secure the battery from sliding back and forth but I removed that to get extra freedom to get the battery cover into position correctly - it holds the battery tightly enough. Oh, and the grub screws on the universal drive cups (part no. 22012) at both ends of the centre propshaft are prone to coming loose and causing the car to go 2WD (undriveably so). It's an inconvenience rather than a major problem, just push the drive up as far as possible toward the differential, and tighten the grub screw with an allen key, making sure the grub is engaging on the flat face of the differential drive pinion (part no. mv22018).
4/5 if I'm being really harsh. It's a budget car and it is a great fun basher without the fear of it being massively expensive to crash. It's fast, tough, water resistant.
Be careful - this car's making me look at getting more RC cars...
