It’s been a while since I’ve played with RC trucks extensively. I bought one a few years ago, wanting to modify it for the use with a cordless WiFi camera, with some limited success. While that truck was a bit more versatile in terms of its potential uses, this Meisto Tech toy is primarily designed to look cool for racing. It is a pretty good toy and so far I’ve had a lot of fun with it.

The biggest difference from the previous trucks that I’ve used is the remote controller. Most controllers that I’ve used before look like your standard PlayStation or Xbox controllers, designed to be used with both hands simultaneously and with your thumbs and fingers doing the navigation. This controller looks more like a gun, with the stirring wheel attached to the side. I still found it pretty straightforward to use, but here and there I would get confused in terms of which direction is forward and which backward. After some time, though, you get used to it.

Both the controller and the car use the standard batteries – AAA for the controller, and AA for the truck. The controller batteries were not included, but since these last for a while and I have plenty of those lying around this was not a major issue for me. The car batteries are included, but these get spent very quickly. I have not done the detailed quantitative testing on this, but in my estimation you’ll need to change the batteries after every hour of play or so. I would definitely recommend getting the rechargeable batteries for the use with this car. Unfortunately in order to access the battery compartment you need to use a screwdriver, which is a bit of an annoyance.

The car itself dries very nicely. It is pretty fast and has a decent amount of torque. It can climb over the obstacles, but it’s not as good at this as I would have liked. Smoother obstacles are not a problem (as long as they are not too tall), but the ones with a more amorphous shape can bring the car to the halt. The car can also slow down considerably on even the slightly thicker carpet. I was initially not sold on the bright neon lights, but after seeing it drive in the dark for a couple of times, I must admit that this “gimmick” does actually look cool, and it enables night-time RC car racing.

I think that the price of this RC car is a bit on the high side. “Regular” RC cars of this type can cost about a half of what this car costs, or even less. I am not sure that all the extra cool features really justify the higher cost.

This car is a bit pricey, and some of its features are not as powerful as I would have liked, but I did have fun using it and it’s a pretty cool toy overall.