This product is excellent! Value for money â­ï¸â­ï¸â­ï¸â­ï¸â­ï¸ Well designed and easy to use. Excellent for beginners and kids 12 years +

This thing goes pretty fast, even on the slow speed setting There are two speed settings: fast (for experts) and slow (for beginners). Truck is agile and has a great suspension system. On the slow speed setting the truck even drifts a bit on hard turns and can catch some air - fun! The overall lightweight allows the truck to get some air when going over our driveway and street curb. Handles my leaf filled grass yard easily and goes really fast on pavement. The super lightweight body that attaches to frame is really durable and flexible, looks like it will last forever. The truck also has LED running lights (function as headlights) included on front.

Just a few little nit-picking issues I have noticed with truck (but don't deter from overall satisfaction with product):
1. the trim works great for correcting forward control but doesn't match with backward control (will go perfectly straight fwd, but not-so-straight in rev on same trim setting).
2. the plastic truck frame is super lightweight but have noticed some minor wear on the bottom of the frame from scraping driveway curb (scuffing) - but that's part of the lightweight trade-off (a heavier aluminum frame vs the lighter plastic frame).
3. the hand controller works great and easy to use but is all plastic. While the car may last for years and years, my fear is the controller may not if my 7-yr old drops it on the pavement a few times.

Standard warning labels on box and paperwork say for 14+ yrs of age.... but my 7-yr old son has mastered this and has no issues using or enjoying it. (I do monitor him when he uses it - I assume the older age warning is because of the electrical parts and battery components.)

Would recommend this for kids or adults and at this price point, I plan on buying another so "dad" can race!

We are the typical family who has spent anywhere from $10-45 on RC vehicles. They usually last a couple of days before they crash and get busted up and end up in the garbage and the kids are upset their new toy broke. After doing that for years we deiced to invest in a more expensive one after reading the reviews we chose this. My daughter liked that it looks like Daddy's Truck, she chose the orange color and named her truck, "Orange Justice."

She enjoyed putting the stickers on and customizing a bit. She broke her arm right before summer started so spending all day at the local pool was ruled out and we got this. We hoped it would live up to the reviews. We've had it for a week now and already feel it's 100% been worth the money! This thing flies, at "normal" the battery life lasts about 30 minutes. It does come with a spare battery too so we charge that while utilizing the current one. She thinks it's kina cool pulling the clips off and "working on it" switching the batteries out. The batteries come with a USB charger (no cube) so it makes charging easy in the car or at home.

It even got my son out of the house to come to play with it and decided we will purchase another for him. We've taken it to our family reunion where everyone had fun playing and have a feeling some cousins will end up with some too. There was a bit of a learning curve to driving it since it is so fast. But my 10-year-old does amazing with it now. It's taken abuse during that time though being ramed into curbs, sticks, done cartwheels and summersalts. Everytime it crashes I think, "Well there goes $75" and to my amazement it just keeps truckin'.

There had to be something wrong with it, right? Something to complain about. Something. Anything.

THE PURCHASE
I bought the Hailstorm about a year ago and had loved it until the ESC stopped working so it was exciting to see that the 18859 which is the latest monster truck version had come out. I didn't know all the differences until I took delivery and was pretty surprised by all the upgrades from the previous version.

WHAT'S NEW
Upon opening the box, I found 1 battery with the transmitter. To my surprise, the car itself had another battery! Two batteries included with this. Not only that, but I almost overlooked the fact that Haiboxing now includes a LiPo battery! Typically budget vehicles get shipped with Li-Ion batteries. The usual mod people do is to simply replace it with a new Li-Po, so it's pretty cool that HBX included in the Li-Po to start with!

The CVD's are metal! Yup, the last version was plastic and metal was an upgrade part. They're now included FREE! Camber has 3 adjustment holes for those that like to tinker with that sort of thing. Suspension still aren't oil filled, but now preload can be adjusted. The top arm on each corner are now beefed up. Pretty significant difference. Overall, the rig is also wider. Body itself is also longer than the previous version. Most may not have noticed but the outdrive cups are a metal band providing further structural support. It's all in the details.

All these improvements makes for a more durable and better performing car. In fact, I ran this over selveral times for fun with my much heavier Arrma Big Rock which is a 1/10 scale monster truck and the 18859 did just fine. Kept on trucking (pun intended). Impressed that HBX went this far with their latest version of the 1/18 scale car w/o increasing the price. Thank you!

DRIVING CHARACTERISTICS
First off, it's quiet! Way quiet. Maybe the last one was this quiet, but compared to some of the other cars I have, this is whisper quiet. The turning radius is tight. Surprisingly tight. So tight in fact that you can bust a donut from a standstill. No need to run it hard, turn one direction to gain the momentum, then turn it hard in the opposite direction to initiate the donut like you'd normally have to do.

There's not enough torque to perform a wheelie, but that's not expected of a 2S budget RC car, particularly of this scale. Enough power to get some good speed with this though.

PACKAGING
Nicely packaged as always. Not sure who's responsibility it was but my Amazon box did come damaged and the exterior of the HBX box inside was also damaged. No damage to the contents so nothing to complain about, but something I did experience on my personal purchase of the 18859.

DECALS
This deserves its own category b/c HBX actually provided two sets of headlights and two sets of tail lights! Pick and choose your favorite! I ended up using the unused set on another car which further improved the aesthetics of that one so thanks again HBX.

OVERALL
Very satisfied with this. Budget cars aren't supposed to be this good. I wasn't even ready to say all this. Was expecting it to be slightly better than mediocre as the reputation of HBX is pretty good but there are a lot of improvements in this iteration of the 18859 to make this almost like a new car. Remember how far the Toyota Camry has come since back in the day? It's like that but HBX style.

WHO IS THIS FOR?
I don't doubt it's durability, particularly with the wider stance, thicker chassis and thicker arms. Truly a hobby grade rc car with a budget conscious price. If you like to mod cars, you have that option with the 18859. Upgrade to oil filled shocks. Install some adjustable turn buckles. Great for kids too b/c it has a slow mode feature. Adjust between slow and normal for developing drivers to novice. I think this is the perfect car if you're a parent looking to get a car for both yourself and your kid but only plan on getting one vehicle to share. Best of both worlds.

This truck was purchased for a 5 year old. Much to fast for him. This is very fast and very responsive. Also pretty heavy. Build quality seems good.