Dan Lambskin said:
Anyone into this hobby?
my soon to be 8 year old is asking for one for his birthday and I’m looking for something in between a cheap $20 POS you’d find at Wal-Mart and a full blown hobby car that’s gonna set me back half a rack. something in the $50-$100 range that would be a good enough starter car to keep him interested but not piss me off if he loses interest after a week
The Traxxas are great, but quite a bit above your price range given. I don't know a lot about the ECXs, but those seem above your budget given as well. And if it's for an 8 year old, I think those are all overkill IMO.
Amazon is littered with RC cars in your price range. They're pretty much all from China. I bought one for my dad a couple of years ago and it has been great for just taking it out and playing with the grandkids. Here are my thoughts:
1) The Chinese RC cars on Amazon will outperform junk from Walmart, etc by a ton. They really will zip around at around 30 mph which will amaze you.
2) The quality won't be nearly as high as a Traxxas or other more serious RC car.
3) The Chinese Amazon cars are all fairly similar. The biggest differentiator is usually initial QA/QC of the cars and customer service from the company selling the cars. Look for a bunch of good, legit seeming, reviews and reviews that mention that the company replaced broken parts easily.
4) Have him drive it in a large open area, especially to start. Driving a car that runs that fast can be a bit tricky, especially at first. And if you hit a wall, pole, tree, etc at 30 mph, you WILL break something on it.
I don't have any familiarity with
this specific company or car, but the reviews seem pretty good, the company seems to be responsive and the price is really good.
If you get him something in this range and he loves it, you can always move on to something like a Traxxas in the $170-200 range later. If he loves it for a week and is done, at least you're only out $50 instead of 3-4 times that much.