Pro Dirt Interceptor
Street Price: $44.99 US
Manufacturer: New Bright
Mfgr's recommended min. age: 8
Our recommended age range: none
Primary use: Indoor or outdoor
Top speed: n/a
Radio: 27mhz
Includes:
- Assembled vehicle
- Controller
- 6V rechargable battery
- Charger
- 2x AA batteries
- Just a driver
Initial Impressions
I've been looking forward to testing out the New Bright Interceptor buggy for awhile now. It is part of the "Pro Dirt" series and looks really good to me from the outside, with flashy graphics, a pretty sleek design, and aggressive tires with staggered sizes front to rear. They call it "1/14th" scale, but it's a bit larger than that, probably a little bigger than 1/12th scale. Once you take it out of the package, you quickly realize that it's unusually light in weight, and New Bright clearly put a lot of thought into minimizing the amount of material used to make the car. A lot of parts are more flexible than I've come to expect, but I didn't want to be quick to hold this against the car. Flexible parts are often less likely to break in a crash (stiffer plastic can be more brittle), and reducing weight is always the best way to improve the performance of a vehicle without using a larger motor. Unfortunately, when I looked for the motor, I almost couldn't find it. It's tiny! I've never seen such a small motor used in such a relatively large car. Normally a motor of this size would be seen in a 1/18th scale car.
The price seemed a little steep at first, but the package includes all of the batteries you need to drie, including AA's for the controller and a 6V rechargable NiMH pack for the car, with a wall charger. If it performs as well as it looks, it has the potential to be a good deal. Let's see...
Testing
Oh, no, this is a tragedy. That undersized motor struggles to move the New Bright Interceptor over even the most modest dirt terrain. It accelerates slowly, and not for long before reaching its absolutely pitiful top speed. There's no digital proportional throttle, just one ridiculously slow speed. There's no digital proportional steering, just one very weak, wide turning radius. Everything this car does looks laborious, like the battery is nearly dead, even though it's fully charged. No fun at all.
Video
(Click a video a second time to view it larger in a new window.)
Conclusion
The New Bright Interceptor buggy is a disgrace to RC, absolute RC Malarkey. All New Bright employees directly involved with designing & releasing this vehicle should be ashamed of themselves for placing such a disgustingly lame product on the market. The packaging says it is for kids 8 years old and up. I personally would not expect a child over 6 to be able to enjoy this vehicle for long, and some feedback I've read on the Internet from parents indicates that even some kids that young get bored of it.
This is a travesty. Terrible products like the New Bright Interceptor are a large part of the reason the toy-grade RC world has lost much of its "cool factor" over the years. There is nothing "cool" about this car other than what it looks like. A kid driving it to show it off to his friends would be ridiculed. This is ridiculous and an absolute shame. Do not buy this vehicle unless you simply like to throw money away. You'd get more enjoyment out of folding up $45 worth of money to make paper airplanes.