Hobby Plus Speck B (Review)
I expected to see some 1/24 buggies come out following the release of the Losi Micro B, but I expected to see them from brands that specialize in buggies a bit. Brands like Team Associated, or Kyosho came to mind, but I never had a buggy from Hobby Plus or HPI on my bingo card, and I definitely didn't expect it to look this good!
Quick Specs
- Scale: 1/24 Buggy
- Brushed Motor 2 in 1 ESC/Receiver (The 2 in 1 can function as a Receiver alone!)
- Battery: 2s Lipo with included USB charger
- Price 84.99 but Check on Amazon
Whats in the Box?
The Speck B comes with the buggy, a Flysky transmitter, similar to what you'd receive with other Hobby Plus, or FMS products, a user manual, a USB Charger, a 350mah 2s lipo battery, and some additional pinion and spur gears to tune your gearing.
Overview
The Speck B offers some very nice quality of life improvements over the Micro B. The gear differential is a tunable, fluid filled unit, the battery tray is adjustable and is enclosed by a much nicer two lever system. You basically turn two levers and the entire top plate comes off for easy battery swaps! Additionally the ESC/Receiver combo included with the Speck B can act as a receiver alone! That means you can easily convert the buggy to a brushless setup without having to swap your radio system, and there's even a nice little plate where you can mount your brushless ESC right on top of the steering servo! The chassis is made of aluminum and the motor is mid mounted similar to the Micro B. Also similar is the way the body is mounted. You just tuck the nose of the body under the shock tower and the back is held on by a piece of velcro. We have full ball bearings throughout, and in all four corners we have some excellent plastic oil filled shocks with threaded shock bodies. I also really appreciate the use of red accents throughout on this chassis. You can see them tastefully scattered around under the pivot balls and on the motor plate – It definitely gives the Speck B a trick, racy look.
First Pack
The first thing that I noticed with the Speck B is that its definitely slower than Losi's Micro B out of the box. Its not bad, but it definitely has noticeably less top speed when you pull the trigger. Hobby Plus includes additional pinion and spur gears that are intended to help you get a higher top speed, but the pinions didn't quite fit the motor so I had to settle for changing the spur only, which landed me only slightly higher gearing. Gearing and top speed aside, the Speck B actually handles really well.
Fifth Pack
After several packs though the Speck B I am really starting to enjoy myself and the fact that I can basically hammer on the throttle as much as I want without repercussion. You can drive the stock Speck B HARD and achieve some pretty good laps while you're at it. The Speck B handles very nicely with the stock setup when it comes to both jumping and cornering. The suspension feels really plush when landing, but also nice and responsive to steering inputs on the controller. The Speck B doesn't suffer from the under steer that you'd expect from a 2wd buggy, and it's aggressive, but not so aggressive that you'll be afraid of traction rolling on tight corners. The stock tires are a knobby style all around and they hook up pretty well on my carpet track, especially for some stock tires. I wouldn't be in a rush to replace these for carpet racing. They'll certainly get the job done while you're still using the stock motor. I really enjoyed running the Speck B a lot, and I was able to run it a lot since the adjustable battery tray allowed me to fit batteries that were slightly bigger than the average Micro B style battery.
Durability/Issues
In my testing I wasn't able to break anything on the Speck B and it certainly took several hard hits before I was finished, but there is one thing that I ran into that I wasn't very happy with. Simply, the additional pinions provided don't fit on the motor shaft. I attempted to force one on, and actually pushed the motor out of the can on the end bell side. A bit of careful drilling would solve the issue entirely, but the type of person that's going to buy a kit like this typically wouldn't want to do something like that, and they likely wouldn't know that you can just reassemble the motor after pushing it out of the can. I would like to see those pinions revised at some point so that people can actually use them, because they'll definitely want to!
Final Word
The Speck B is an excellent little buggy, with a lot of performance and quality of life features, offered at an incredible price point. While it is a little on the slower side, it is a very capable and well designed chassis. The motor plate will accept most motors meant for this scale, and the included electronics will make upgrading your power system a breeze. The ability to plug a brushless ESC into the stock unit is going to be huge for newcomers! While it may not make a very big difference on carpet, the adjustable differential is also a nice addition on the Speck B, and will help a lot for people who want to run it in the dirt, or on other lower traction surfaces. Overall I think the Speck B is great and absolutely worth a look if you're looking into 1/24th scale buggies.
