HS10422 Review: The best value BIG RC Truck for Beginners?

The HS10422 HS10423 HS10424 is a large 1/8 scale 2WD RC Truck that includes everything needed to run (including battery and charger). It is the cheapest truck of this size by a long shot so I decided to check it out to see if it is any good. I'll cover in a LOT more detail below but I came out of the review phase thinking this is the best big beginner car by some margin.

When I first saw this car I had to double take - a 1/8 truck for $120 (or much less on promotion) is pretty crazy. On closer inspection this had proportional servo steering, a full 540 sized brushed motor with electronic speed control and even includes and battery and charger. No matter which way you cut it that is an awful lot of car for the money. Now that I've had a chance to play with this for the last month or so I can confirm the size is REALLY impressive - check it out compared to some of the popular WL toys car below too. I've obviously had a chance to gauge it's performance, durability, battery life and more as well as taking a closer look at the design and build. Read on to find out more plus my conclusions and recommendations.

HS 10422 compared to the hugely popular WL Toys 1/14 scale 144001

HS10422 compared to the new WL Toys 1/10 scale 104001 (my review of that car here). You can see this truck doesn't even fit on my A2 cutting mat.

Design and Build quality

In this section I'll cover how this car has been designed and put together. If this is of no interest then I'd recommend jumping straight to the performance section.

Power and drive train
Power starts at the battery which is a 2s 1500mah li ion pack. Li Ion batteries tend to have less peak current output than comparable lipos but in this case that is fine - as you'll see this is an extremely efficient truck and so puts very little stress on the battery. As you can see in the images below, there is plenty of room for a larger battery if you wish. The battery compartment is well made and very secure.

Battery is very well secured with a tray and clip system.

Stock battery is a little 2s 1500mah Li Ion pack. You feel a little ripped off when you open up the tray but to be fair it gets decent run time - around 15 minutes

This little divider that keeps the stock battery from moving around can be removed to fit a larger battery

The stock 2s 2200mah battery from the WL Toys 124019 is a great upgrade from this car and gives around 20 minutes run time. Fits easily in the tray as above.

Integrated ESC/receiver is very well mounted in this car.

Similar to practically every other budget hobby grade car, the ESC on the HS10422 is integrated with the receiver. These usually function well if you retain the stock motor and don't try to increase the battery cell count - avoid the temptation to go from 2s 7.4v to 3s 11.1v (going up in capacity: mah is fine). Because it is integrated you would need to move to an aftermarket receiver and transmitter as well if you wished to upgrade the ESC, again, same with any budget RC car. Obviously not an issue if you wish to remain stock.

The motor is a standard 540 brushed motor which is an appropriate size for this car. These are commonly found in 1/10 scale cars and have been around for decades. With the right gearing and setup (like on the HS10422 here) these can be efficient and smooth. Shrouding helps keep dirt and other contaminants out of the business area.

The HS10422 uses an extremely efficient 2wd gearbox that is practically silent. Pinion gear is a mod 0.6 mod press on unit which is well suited to this car and mates cleanly to a plastic spur. Gearing to the diff is of a heavier pitch but is well lubricated and as I said, nigh on silent. The motor does not have an adjustable mount and the pinion gear is press fit. This means that although there are great options for pinion gears available for cheap in this size, they will be difficult to fit without a lot of modification.

Underneath the protective gear cover we can see they are running mod 0.6 gears which is a well suited pitch for this car. 14t pinion is pressed on to the shaft so you don't need to worry about it coming loose.

Removing the spur gear we can see the gearbox is nicely greased. No motor location adjustment means no option to change gear ratios but it means that gear mesh is perfectly set.

Internal gearbox diff gear is much heavier pitch but even so is almost silent.

According to the box, metal gears are used in the diff which is a great find. Since this is 2wd only there are no complicated transfer gears or front gearboxes to worry about. Further out there are metal output cups and decently thick metal dogbone drive shafts. Outer cups are also metal and drive the wheels by the common 12mm hex drive to the wheels. This means you have plenty of wheel options available if you wish to change.

Metal diff cups and metal dogbone driveshafts are holding up well.

Metal outer cups and standard 12mm hex hubs mean you have a variety of wheels and tyres to choose from

Suspension and steering
Suspension is very basic - coil springs and no oil dampening. This will make the car bouncy off-road and will compromise grip somewhat although it does have some decently big tyres to offset that. This is probably the one place I would consider upgrading with something like this at around $12 a pair: 2PCS ZD Racing 7359 Alloy Oil Filled Rear Shock Damper Absorber for 1/10. At 86mm eye to eye these shocks would be easy to replace with low cost oil-filled shocks on all 4 corners like the ones mentioned above but honestly I'd drive as is first.

Yellow springs look awesome but there are no oil-filled dampers underneath.

Pretty bouncy!

There are no adjustable tie rods to adjust camber and toe front and rear but plastic links instead and I'm ok with that - they are well tuned from factory and the cars runs straight and neutral. In this case the plastic is very durable and I haven't had a single issue with them since I've had them. In fact, some of the crashes and spills I've had with this car would have popped off adjustable tie rods whereas this car flexes and keeps on going. 

Lots of plastic here but it's the durable type that absorbs shock well. I've seen this setup on the SG 1602 before (reviewed here) which was super durable.

Due to the fact that front wheels only need to steer in a rear wheel drive car, steering is very basic and powered by a slowish but reliably centering servo. Fit for purpose.

Body and wheels
I really like the body on this one. Style is a cross between truggy and monster truck and it is made from nice thick polycarbonate, prepainted and stickered from the factory. It integrates really well with the factory bumpers front and rear which should protect it really well. There is a spoiler included but I prefer the look without it. It actually attaches directly to the body which I don't like - it puts to much stress on the body in a crash - a truggy would usually have this mounted to the rear shock tower instead. Spare body pins are included which is great, I swear I have a body clips gremlin in my garage.

I like the look of the body

Well protected by front bumper

It even has a rear bumper that is well integrated

Wheels are straight up awesome. diameter and with suit the car well and you can see the dimensions below. Yes, the rubber is pretty hard but this means they won't wear too fast and given the power of this truck, grip just fine. The size means this truck has good ground clearance without even really trying.

Nice tall tyres for plenty of ground clearance

Nice and wide for plenty of grip, even on a slow wearing hard rubber tyre

Transmitter and other parts
The transmitter is basic and plasticky but does the job. Steering wheel and throttle are smooth and offer decent, proportional control. Most importantly it has a dial for 'speed' which is what we usually call steering dual rate. This dial essentially scales the top speed to standstill, full speed and everything in between. Perfect for limiting speed for a younger one. At least until they figure out what the dial does! This remote will require 3 x AA batteries and runs on digital 2.4GHz for a reliable control link.

Also included in the pack is a charger that plugs into a USB port. Quality like other USB chargers is just good enough but would definitely recommend running off a USB wall adapter rather than risking the USB port on your computer. Lastly there is a spare link arm, body pins and a wheel nut wrench. Mine had a philips screwdriver too which is a handy inclusion. You can also see the durable spoiler here which I've chosen not to put on this car.

Performance

Speed
This car is not designed for flat out speed because of the gearing which is targets efficiency and pickup as a preference. Even then, I have clocked it consistently at 28km/h using my overly expensive SKYRC GSM020 GPS unit. This is actually faster than all but elite sprinters just as a yardstick but slower than models like the WL Toys 124019 and 144001 which run a similar motor but taller gearing.

Pickup / acceleration
The sacrifices made in reducing to speed are made up in acceleration which is brisk for this car - certainly more than the 2WD system is capable of maintaining traction on most surfaces, even with the large tyres. Lots of skids for this guy which make it more involved to drive than a 4wd setup.

Battery life
The other benefit of having conservative gearing is battery life. You'd expect a big car with a small battery like this to get poor battery life but it is actually really good - I typically get around 15 minutes of pretty spirited driving in grass, dirt, tarmac and not just in straight lines - bouncing of obstacles, spinning out, taking off - the works. Compare this to the WL Toys 144001 (which has the same size battery and motor) where you get only around 7 minutes of running.

Handling
As mentioned before the lack of oil-filled shocks compromise and handling since they don't keep the tyre in constant contact with the ground as well as they could. Oil shocks would likely improve this but not by a huge amount. It also means that you are likely to bottom out over large jumps but again, this is not the end of the world, especially with the reinforced metal plates on the underside of the chassis front and rear.

Chassis reinforcement front

Chassis reinforcement rear

Now one thing that really surprised me was how well balanced the weight split was and the positive impact on cornering. Usually rear wheel drive cars understeer (plow) badly through corners and you need to essentially steer with your throttle, especially on cheaper model. This car really surprised me with good responsive steering even when I was trying to invoke understeer. Check out the video below to see what I mean. This makes for a predictable drive, certainly for a 2wd anyway.

My last comment on handling is for stability. Usually monster trucks have a high centre of gravity due to big wheels and high ground clearance so are often flipping which means a walk of shame to turn the thing over fairly regularly. It is surprising but that's not the case here. At most I seem to be turing this over maybe once per battery? Pretty good in my books. See more in the video below:

Terrain.
Due to the high ground clearance and big wheels this car is very much at home grass and dirt unlike some of the smaller scale cars which either struggle through grass or overheat if they do. As you can see above it's fun on tarmac too as long as you have some corners or obstacles to play with. You may struggle in really heavy off road due to 2wd being a limiting factor - there is just not as much traction on offer compared to 4wd.

Durability
This truck seems to be surprisingly tough. I've almost forgotten how simple a 2WD car design is and that simplicity and much smaller number of moving parts means that even at a base level this will have and advantage in the durability stake. When you combine that with lots of plastic that seems to flex well enough to absorb impact but stay stiff enough to not to flex when not wanted than that certainly helps too. Since the body is of a monster truck style it is compact and doesn't take impact often compared to say a short course truck design. As mentioned the front and rear bumpers also do a good job of keeping the body safe. Lastly, one thing I haven't mentioned is that this car is fairly light - this means that much less energy is carried into a crash.

Recommendations.
So after all of that bench review and performance testing, who do I think this car is for? Lets review key characteristics:

• Large
• Very durable
• Big ground clearance
• Not particularly fast
• No tuning needed out of the box
• Long battery life
• Good acceleration
• Predictable handling
• Poor suspension
• No scope for upgrading motor and power system without a lot of work.
• Easy to maintain

In my mind the target user is VERY clear here - this is the perfect truck for the beginner. I think the ideal scenario would be for a kid who would like to step up from a toy grade car to the real thing. There is no shortage of good value small scale RC cars in the bracket but nothing large and lets face it - the large size is a huge drawcard for kids. When I say kids lets be clear, there is not an age limit on that - young at heart also counts!

In my best budget bashers of 2020 the SG1602 as my favourite basher because it required no real upgrades and was a lot of fun out of the box, was strong and had great battery life. Well I think that the small hit on speed that the HS10422 takes is more than made up for by the presence of size so yeah, fair to say that this car is now my recommendation for newcomers (or relative newcomers) to the RC car game. Thanks for reading and feel free to ask questions below or on my facebook page www.facebook.com/quadifyrc/ if you wish to know more.

My HS10422 (also goes by the name of HS10423 HS10424) was ordered from Banggood and they are my recommended retailer for this car. They are not always the cheapest but are reliable and ship to more countries. You can check out the product page here:

HS10422 10424 10423 1/8 RC Car High Speed Off-Road 2.4G 7.4V 1500mAh Full Proportional Control Big Foot RTR RC Vehicle Models for Kids and Adults - Red

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