While we had lots of fun with these trucks it was short lived. The motor went out on the back wheels after 3 charges on the battery. This might be due to a lot of crashing but it was the rear end not the front. 3-6 year olds played with them and you can't to get them to stop before running into something. I will update on the other truck when the time comes.

Update: I took the truck apart today and removed the gear connecting the motor to the rear wheels and it is now a front wheel drive. I'm going to see if I can get a new motor. I should tell you this comes apart very easy but not so easy to get it back together.

Dont even bother with aa batteries. The truck wouldnt move its rear wheels when i tried brand new aa batteries. It is basically unusable with aa batteries. I had some lithium ion cells laying around that i planned to us with this so i made a 2s2p pack. Well the rear motor started smoking a little when testing the pack. I thought for a minuet that i had set it up wrong. I didnt so i kept running it till it quit smoking. I think it had grease or the motor needed burned in because now it runs great. Definitely works well with li ion batteries. Do not bother with aa alkaline. It shouldnt even have the option to use aa batteries its like running witn a totally dead pack.

Ordered 2. One arrived fine. The rear wheels for the 2nd one were not fixed straight & could be turned. Returned it & the replacement was fine. All 3 were useless with 6 AA batteries in the truck. The "optional" rechargeable battery pack is a MUST. The box says it is a performance upgrade, but it should come with the truck. Ordered the battery pack & now the truck works great! All the videos with the truck driving over things must have the rechargeable battery pack because the truck is useless without it. My 3 & 5 year old boys love them & the trucks seem to be able to take some abuse (they crash & flip them constantly). I like the hill assist mode where the truck stops when they let go of the throttle. Overall great truck WITH the rechargeable battery, but ended up spending around $50 instead of $30 for their first truck which is a little more than I intended. Also had to wait until the batteries arrived before they could use it which was also a drag. Overall though, great truck!

with aa battery pack it was very slow and had no power but I ordered 7.2v 800mAh battery from redcat raceing and man what a difference it was like night and day me and the boys had a ball going to have to order at lest 2 more just hope I can find some more bodies this is a great crawler for your first hobby grade if any body knows where I can find some different body please let me know....Okay after a few body up grades I've got a neat little truck. Lights are next(there on order just an't came in yet) and just ordered a set of new tries and wheels. I could have ordered a higher priced model but this has really been fun just seeing what you can do with it My grandsons are know thinking up ways to make theirs better than grandpas lol

**UPDATED REVIEW**
after the third (maybe fourth) time i took it out the rear motor stopped working and creates a great ammount of drag. truck moves on concrete but in dirt the front wheels just spin. since i do not have much time for R/C activities recently the return date has already passed. this was a SUPER FUN product while it worked but now it looks like i will have to try to dissasemble the unit myself and hopefully its just a loose wire or something of that sort that i can fix easily.
ORIGINAL REVIEW: 5 STARS
AWESOME for the price! you couldnt POSSIBLY find any unit available at this price to compare. this unit is fully proportional, unlike the OTHER crawlers in the same price range (up to around $70) that are just ON/OFF for forward/reverse, left/right. this unit even has a switch for hill brake, so it doesnt roll back down the hill when you let off the throttle. however i found that the hill brake seems to make the truck a bit jumpy, less sensitive to small throttle responses so i just use the normal mode. another thing to note is the way they have the controler set up: you must let off the forward throttle and press lever back twice to enter reverse. takes a little getting used to, but not a significant drawback. YES this unit is totally PLASTIC and will BREAK with ABUSE. however at this price level what would you expect? even so, this unit is cheap enuf that you can just buy a whole new unit if it breaks, and with Amazon 2-day shipping, no worries! :-)