I been out of this fun for a decade give or take a year.
Never was a RC (Red Cat) fan back in the day. They have stepped up their game. This is a good thing.
Looking at the current options, price points, package contents etc, RC has done well becoming viable competition.
I am basically starting over, and the SCX10 III caught my attention. But everyone is OoS at the moment.
So to get going again, i started checking out all the new rigs/companies.
After a few weeks of checking out the options, I decided to grab the Gen 8 rtr just for something to run, while I build an SSD kit and try to fit the RC4WD Blazer on the kit in the meantime.
But after seeing what all came with the Axe edition, the upgrades not to mention the HW ESC/Motor system which is 220.00 on its own, the Axe setup was a no brainer buy over the Gen 8 itself.
Just got here today, and looking forward to getting in a few runs in the next few days. I can see I will need to work on the Shocks, they are good, but not quite riding even in the front out of the box. Will have to do a bit of tweaking on the steering link as it has some bump steer going on. Probably swap the straight link for a swept steering link. That alone should help the bump steer out a bit.
At any rate. Unless you think you wont be doing A LOT OF this. and just want to fart around a bit, the Gen 8 setup would be a good place to start.
However, if you want to run, maybe do some comps, and want to start out of the box a bit ahead of the game, for the 200.00 bones, the Axe unit is the hands down best deal out there atm I would say.