VATOS Remote Control Car RC Car Toy 4WD High Speed Car Off Road Vehicle 1:20 Scale 26km/h 2.4GHz RC Monster Truck Racing Car RC Buggy Truck Crawler Hobby Toy for Kids (Green)

Years ago, I was deeply invested in hobby grade RC’s, trucks, cars, and helicopters.

I’ve got a few of my large vehicles around still (a few trucks and a car) and in the last five years, I’ve gotten into 3D printing, with some 3D modeling.

I’ve managed to design a few parts for my large vehicles, but trying to print fully solid parts can get expensive, to the point it’s actually cheaper to just search for and buy parts. But I’ve always wanted to print some customized parts, mostly wheels and tires, for an RC. Very early last year, I got a “Firerunner” 1:24 scale RC truck, which I really like. Trouble is, it’s TOO small. Parts are so tiny that 3D printed units just break. So, a few weeks ago I randomly did a search here on Amazon for 1:20 scale RC’s, and this one popped up.

I haven’t started modding this little truck…..YET. But I’ve been driving it around and felt my experiences and opinions of it in stock form were most valuable. Let’s start with power:

This little guy has it in spades! Yes, it’s a brushed motor. But with it’s soft, sticky tires, on carpet, this truck will flip itself on it’s lid with one quick pull of the throttle trigger. On firm, tight dirt or rock, this truck will again flip itself on it’s lid if put in reverse then forward, even with the delay between directional shifts! I haven’t tried driving this little truck on pavement….YET. But the tires are so soft I bet they’d wear out very quickly. Now, onto durability:

Again, very tough little truck! I haven’t sent this truck skyward….YET. But launched off a small ramp or dirt jump, I think it would do just fine. The truck is lightweight enough that it bounces back from hard impacts very well. I’ve sent it careening from having it fly across my rock and gravel driveway, and have flipped it on hard, fast turns numerous times already, and aside from a few light scuffs, the truck is raring to keep going. Now, onto electronics and other features:

I REALLY like the battery holding cage of this truck!! I love the fact that it doesn’t use clips or flimsy clamp plates, or any tools to use it, yet it very firmly holds the battery in place! As mentioned, this truck has a brushed motor….which is sealed away with it’s ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) inside the enclosed chassis of the truck. This concerns me. The motor is directly under the battery cage, which means the motor’s heat is warming up the Lithium battery. Lithium doesn’t bode well with heat…. I can only hope it never becomes an issue. This does give the truck highly water RESISTANT properties, but I worry about motor ventilation, and I worry some buyers may make a conflating assumption that waterPROOF and water RESISTANT are the same, when they are not.

Finally, as to why I haven’t given this truck five stars: I haven’t had this truck’s low battery voltage cutoff engage on me, which worries me. I’ve driven this truck for about 30 minutes, full throttle, on my driveway. The truck finally slowed a teeny tiny bit, but it didn’t stop running, which is what it’s supposed to do. Maybe this truck just has phenomenally long battery times, but I have my doubts. The battery is still in great condition, though I’ve been using my hobby grade battery charger to charge it (the included USB cable works just fine though!)

Overall, this truck packs a shockingly high punch for it’s size. Aside from it’s tires, it could handle a lot of abuse, and I’d definitely recommend it for responsible kids, and/or an older kid or “big kid” adult that may want to modify it. On that note, one may have noticed I said ‘YET’ a few times in this review.

I have plans for this truck. It has really nice shock absorbers….that aren’t filled with oil!? This flabbergasted me. I’m definitely going to remove one and see if it’s sealed. If it is, I’m loading all four shocks with dampening oil. Also, I’m going to design and 3D print at least two sets of wheel/tire combos for this truck. One smaller set of PLA wheels/tires for some drifting action, either on pavement or on a hard floor. It’ll look weird, but should be a lot of fun! And another set of TPU treaded tires, for tread design experimentation. Heck, I may even try my hand at design different bodies for this truck!

This is another small gripe I have, but it’s very personal and given the intended audience of this truck, I can’t hold this against it. This truck’s wheels are held in place with a single screw, threaded directly into the plastic hub. As I swap wheels and tires out, I just know those plastic hubs will wear out. Not a fault of the manufacturer, as they didn’t intend for mods like this to happen, but I do wish they had gone with a run of the mill hex hub with a metal threaded shaft for the wheels. I’m hoping that push comes to shove, either I can find some replacements, or better yet, develop and make a more durable hub. Maybe one like I described, once I wear this truck’s stock tires out but I’m digressing here!

Again, very solid little truck, so long as it’s used responsibly! I shall see how well it holds up to mods that I create and install on it!

Santa brought it to our 4 year old son and we all love it. At this age we have to use it on the lowest speed and it is still amazingly fast, powerful and the battery lasts forever. It’s very lightweight, about 420g and quite small but packs a powerful engine and the standard 7,4V battery that can power much larger RC toys, feels much like a 300hp Porsche. The controls are also very smooth and precise, it registers even the tiniest movement and is very easy to maneuver even by our 4yo, and it’s great for training his fine motor skills.

Within 24h we played a lot with it and emptied the battery twice, once indoors, and once outdoors.

Indoors we use it to pull all sorts of toys to slow it down even further, otherwise it’s way to fast even on the slowest setting. The heaviest thing it was able to pull was a truck toy with a 8Kg kettlebell on top, so pulling something 20 times heavier is impressive. With smaller cargo it’s more manageable and still a lot of fun.

Outdoor the battery lasted for about an hour on on temperature around -5C, on snow and ice surface on a countryside road and it was again a lot of fun, especially when drifting on ice.

I only tried it once on high speed and it was so fast that I had a hard time keeping it under control.

I also attempted to test the range of the remote control and at some point I could barely see it anymore and it was still reacting to commands.

The only complaint is the poor design of the front bumper which is already cracked after bumping into some obstacles, and the suboptimal way to secure the body of the car using those metal clips. We already lost one of those clips and would prefer something using springs instead.

All in all the quality, driving experience and level of detail is amazing (including springs, dampeners and 3 differentials), and the motor and battery insanely powerful for its weight.

Totally recommend this product!

Parfait pour l’instant. 2 jours de jeux. Semble assez costaud et rpond nos attentes. Mon petit fils est ravi

Beim Auspacken war ich zuerst von der geringen Gre berrascht. Die ist zwar angegeben, aber wenn man das Auto in der Hand hlt, ist es doch ziemlich klein. Dafr macht der Unterbau einen guten, schweren und soliden Eindruck. Wenn der Flitzer dann mal loslegen darf, macht er seine Gre durch Geschwindigkeit sofort wieder wett. Ich habe zwar keine Mglichkeit, die Geschwindigkeit zu messen, aber geschtzt kam er gut auf 20 km/h und lie sich dabei echt gut steuern und dosieren. Auch langsames, genaues Fahren ist ohne Probleme mglich.
Nach mehreren Fahrstunden und Unfllen, auch bei vollem Tempo, ist noch nichts kaputt, abgesehen von ein paar Kratzern. Da merkt man, dass das Auto doch in einer ganz anderen Liga spielt, als die optisch hnlichen Fahrzeuge aus dem 20,- Euro-Sektor. Ich bin jedenfalls voll zufrieden damit.

J’ai reu la voiture lors d’une promotion.
Celle ci est bien arriv bien emball.
Au dballage superbe qualit elle ne fait pas voiture entr de gamme mais plus petite que je l’imaginais.
Petit hic la batterie promise dans la description n’y est pas donc rclamation et arrangement avec le sav Amazon que je remercie pour son professionnalisme.
Les couleurs sont top
La tlcommande est bien faite avec une excellente prise en main .
Jouet achet pour Nol donc pas test sur route juste dball et contrl.
Je suis sur que cela sera un beau cadeau qui fera son effet .
La.biite est sympa et touts les accessoires sont fournis juste prvoir une seconde batterie car je pense qu’une sance avec cette voiture donnera de l’apptit pour faire une seconde scenace de suite pour un enfant .
Je recommande excellent rapport qualit prix

My son loves this toy and it was a wonderful Christmas gift.

My son is 11years old and plays with this truck daily…strong,fast, durable, especially with a 11year old steering it…and it recharges fas

Read the other reviews about how much fun this RC car is and know that I agree. I only want to add some less reported information.

We ordered two, because two kids being able to race against each other is 3 times the fun. It sounds the obvious thing to do.

These cars are fully proportional. This means that unlike the $20 type of RC cars both steering and throttling are not of the “all or nothing” type but that you can actually regulate how sharp to corner and how fast to drive.

These little cars are powerful. With the 7.4V lithium batteries freshly charged they can actually do wheelies.

These cars have actual differentials that spread traction over all 4 wheels evenly. Cheaper RC cars may use axles that connect the left and right wheels rigidly which leads to a much less pleasant steering experience.

These cars are stable.
I am surprised about how well these cars stay right side up. One of the most annoying things about playing with RC cars must be that you accidentally flip them over and then need to walk 50 feet to put them back on their feet. I won’t say you can’t accidentally land them on their back, but I do mean it does not happen annoyingly often.

The cars run surprisingly long on a full charge. Sure you can get more spare packs but I believe the driving and charging time is a good compromise between wiring the kids up and allowing them to cool back down.

The controls needed a small fix.
Both units gave some reliability problems in the beginning. One transmitter did not work at all and the other quit at the slightest bump. I was already in the process of sending them back when I decided to do a quick try on fixing them myself as it only felt like a loose wire or something. It turned out that the battery contacts were unreliable. The reliability may vary depending on the brand of batteries but I believe the standard Rayovac AA batteries should have been no problem. Anyway, I opened the remote (5 small Philips screws) and bent the little metal plate that makes contact with the positive of one battery so that it would create better contact. That’s all. It worked perfectly after that.

There is a weird little controlling issue.
There is some hesitation when switching from driving forwards to driving backwards. I don’t know why it does that and I believe it would turn RC car connoisseurs definitely off but hey, if you are a kid and not interested in practicing your parallel parking skills you won’t care.