I just wrapped up my review for the JJRC Q46 that Banggood sent to me recently, and wanted to share some of my opinions here.
(I'll be updating this post with photos as time allows)
The box is nice looking, with full color artwork. One side has a large picture of the truck in blue, and the other side has a picture of the truck in red, which is what I received. The truck and other hardware is well packed in foam, and should easily survive all but the most ambitious shipping excursions.
The contents includes the truck itself, the controller, a small tool kit that has a plastic hex wrench and tiny phillips screwdriver, a mostly useless instruction manual, and an even more useful advertisement pamphlet.
The controller is a very basic 2.4ghz controller. The only adjustments available are for throttle trim and steering trim, despite the labels indicating that they are throttle trim and throttle dual rate. The controller is lightweight, but has a foam grip on the wheel, and is actually very comfortable in hand. It feels very similar to the Traxxas TQi controllers, which I really like the feel of. Some of the cosmetic decals are already peeling off of mine, but that's of little concern.
The truck itself looks great. The red metallic hard body looks really nice. The decals are kept to a minimum, which helps show off the nice red metallic body. The headlights look great, and light up along with the roof mounted light bar. There's also a nicely detailed interior, and getting a smaller figure into the seats shouldn't be too difficult.
Under the snazzy hard body, this is a WLToys 12428. It's the same chassis, similar overall electronics package, including a 540 brushed motor, and same suspension except for the rear shock mounting, which I'll get to shortly. The truck has the same independant front suspension with the laydown cantelevered shock design up front, and a solid axle with a 4 link suspension out back. Unlike the 12428 that mounts the rear shocks midway down the rear trailing arms, the Q46 has the rear shocks mounted to the rear axle. Instead of mounting to shock towers on the body, the rear shocks mount to a part of the hard body directly above the rear axle. The shocks are friction filled, and have very firm coilover springs around them. This results in a stiff, bouncy suspension. Like the 12428, the differential gears are plastic, but the axles are metal. The vehicle is assembled with phillips screws, not hex, but most of the screw heads are well protected and shouldn't get scraped up badly enough to cause problems removing them.
The battery is mounted directly behind the rear tire, which along with that tire, just raises the center of gravity on a truck that's already very top heavy because of the hard body. This mounting cavity is very small, and unless you get creative with a new battery mounting location, you're going to be very limited with what types of batteries that you'll be able to use. The battery connects to the ESC via a Deans connector. I hate Deans connectors, but at least it's not a Tamiya plug. The location under the back of the hard body makes plugging and unplugging the battery a bit difficult. The battery claims to be a 3000mah 30C lipo pack. None of those claims are correct. The battery is made from a pair of series-wired 18650 lithium ion cells. When charging this battery, it only takes 1200-1300mah of current, and based on the somewhat soft throttle response and the warm battery pack at the end of each run, it's very obvious that the cells are nowhere close to the claimed 30C discharge rate. Runtime was only about 10 minutes. This pack is undersized for that big 540 motor, and I don't expect it to hold up for long. On the plus side, the soggy current delivery makes the truck easier to drive, and will likely extend the life of the drivetrain. One important thing to note here is that because this is a pair of 18650 li-ion cells, you should configure your charger accordingly, and only charge the batteries to 4.1v per cell, not 4.2.
The wheels and tires are pretty nice for RTR stuff. The wheels have a 1.9" outer diameter, with a larger inner diameter. They look like mini shourtcourse wheels. They are a standard 12mm hex, so other wheel and tire combos can be added. The tires have a nice knobby design, and are pretty grippy for an RTR tire. They aren't grippy enough to be a good crawler tire, but they're way better than the rock hard junk that usually comes on high speed bashers. The foam is appropriately firm for the type of vehicle it is. These tires seem to provide great grip on all surfaces. That excellent grip makes this top-heavy truck unusable on high traction surfaces, but when combined with the 4 wheel drive, makes the truck very controllable on loose dirt.
My driving experience with the truck was a lot more positive than I had initially expected. My first couple minutes on pavement was a major letdown, but once I moved to rougher offroad terrain, the truck was surprisingly fun. It bounced around much like an old friction shock equipped Tamiya would, and that made it a blast to drive. The truck is surprisingly fast (I'd estimate 20-22mph), and pretty well composed for being so bouncy. The grippy tires and 4wd keep it going where you want to. The low C rating of the battery actually helps here too. If you use a more powerful battery, the vehicle would have more powerful acceleration, which would make it harder to control.
I had my 6 year old daughter and my 9 year old son drive the truck, and they both enjoyed it. The steering and throttle controls are smooth enough that neither of them had any problems driving it smoothly and keeping it under control. They had a few tumbles with the truck, but every time they flipped it over, they got big smiles on their faces, and they fought over who got to go flip it back over for me when I was driving.
Overall I had pretty low expectations for the truck, but I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. I've put a few packs through it and I'm going to keep using it. I may buy some higher quality 18650 cells and make a better battery pack for it. If I end up stripping the plastic gears, I'll grab a set of the metal gears that are sold for the 12428.
For those who are interested, the truck is available here for just under $80:
https://www.banggood.com/JJRC-Q46-1...getrc&utm_content=3341&p=BN2215837627201410DH
Make sure you check out my full review below, which also includes a new segment called "Henry's Corner" where my 9 year old son provides a younger person's perspective.
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c-IJIF1P95A" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
(I'll be updating this post with photos as time allows)
The box is nice looking, with full color artwork. One side has a large picture of the truck in blue, and the other side has a picture of the truck in red, which is what I received. The truck and other hardware is well packed in foam, and should easily survive all but the most ambitious shipping excursions.
The contents includes the truck itself, the controller, a small tool kit that has a plastic hex wrench and tiny phillips screwdriver, a mostly useless instruction manual, and an even more useful advertisement pamphlet.
The controller is a very basic 2.4ghz controller. The only adjustments available are for throttle trim and steering trim, despite the labels indicating that they are throttle trim and throttle dual rate. The controller is lightweight, but has a foam grip on the wheel, and is actually very comfortable in hand. It feels very similar to the Traxxas TQi controllers, which I really like the feel of. Some of the cosmetic decals are already peeling off of mine, but that's of little concern.
The truck itself looks great. The red metallic hard body looks really nice. The decals are kept to a minimum, which helps show off the nice red metallic body. The headlights look great, and light up along with the roof mounted light bar. There's also a nicely detailed interior, and getting a smaller figure into the seats shouldn't be too difficult.
Under the snazzy hard body, this is a WLToys 12428. It's the same chassis, similar overall electronics package, including a 540 brushed motor, and same suspension except for the rear shock mounting, which I'll get to shortly. The truck has the same independant front suspension with the laydown cantelevered shock design up front, and a solid axle with a 4 link suspension out back. Unlike the 12428 that mounts the rear shocks midway down the rear trailing arms, the Q46 has the rear shocks mounted to the rear axle. Instead of mounting to shock towers on the body, the rear shocks mount to a part of the hard body directly above the rear axle. The shocks are friction filled, and have very firm coilover springs around them. This results in a stiff, bouncy suspension. Like the 12428, the differential gears are plastic, but the axles are metal. The vehicle is assembled with phillips screws, not hex, but most of the screw heads are well protected and shouldn't get scraped up badly enough to cause problems removing them.
The battery is mounted directly behind the rear tire, which along with that tire, just raises the center of gravity on a truck that's already very top heavy because of the hard body. This mounting cavity is very small, and unless you get creative with a new battery mounting location, you're going to be very limited with what types of batteries that you'll be able to use. The battery connects to the ESC via a Deans connector. I hate Deans connectors, but at least it's not a Tamiya plug. The location under the back of the hard body makes plugging and unplugging the battery a bit difficult. The battery claims to be a 3000mah 30C lipo pack. None of those claims are correct. The battery is made from a pair of series-wired 18650 lithium ion cells. When charging this battery, it only takes 1200-1300mah of current, and based on the somewhat soft throttle response and the warm battery pack at the end of each run, it's very obvious that the cells are nowhere close to the claimed 30C discharge rate. Runtime was only about 10 minutes. This pack is undersized for that big 540 motor, and I don't expect it to hold up for long. On the plus side, the soggy current delivery makes the truck easier to drive, and will likely extend the life of the drivetrain. One important thing to note here is that because this is a pair of 18650 li-ion cells, you should configure your charger accordingly, and only charge the batteries to 4.1v per cell, not 4.2.
The wheels and tires are pretty nice for RTR stuff. The wheels have a 1.9" outer diameter, with a larger inner diameter. They look like mini shourtcourse wheels. They are a standard 12mm hex, so other wheel and tire combos can be added. The tires have a nice knobby design, and are pretty grippy for an RTR tire. They aren't grippy enough to be a good crawler tire, but they're way better than the rock hard junk that usually comes on high speed bashers. The foam is appropriately firm for the type of vehicle it is. These tires seem to provide great grip on all surfaces. That excellent grip makes this top-heavy truck unusable on high traction surfaces, but when combined with the 4 wheel drive, makes the truck very controllable on loose dirt.
My driving experience with the truck was a lot more positive than I had initially expected. My first couple minutes on pavement was a major letdown, but once I moved to rougher offroad terrain, the truck was surprisingly fun. It bounced around much like an old friction shock equipped Tamiya would, and that made it a blast to drive. The truck is surprisingly fast (I'd estimate 20-22mph), and pretty well composed for being so bouncy. The grippy tires and 4wd keep it going where you want to. The low C rating of the battery actually helps here too. If you use a more powerful battery, the vehicle would have more powerful acceleration, which would make it harder to control.
I had my 6 year old daughter and my 9 year old son drive the truck, and they both enjoyed it. The steering and throttle controls are smooth enough that neither of them had any problems driving it smoothly and keeping it under control. They had a few tumbles with the truck, but every time they flipped it over, they got big smiles on their faces, and they fought over who got to go flip it back over for me when I was driving.
Overall I had pretty low expectations for the truck, but I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. I've put a few packs through it and I'm going to keep using it. I may buy some higher quality 18650 cells and make a better battery pack for it. If I end up stripping the plastic gears, I'll grab a set of the metal gears that are sold for the 12428.
For those who are interested, the truck is available here for just under $80:
https://www.banggood.com/JJRC-Q46-1...getrc&utm_content=3341&p=BN2215837627201410DH
Make sure you check out my full review below, which also includes a new segment called "Henry's Corner" where my 9 year old son provides a younger person's perspective.
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c-IJIF1P95A" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
