GX Buggy micro RC car – hands on review

The Tomy GX Buggy is a micro remote controlled car from Tomy, the people who bought you the Q-steer and, before that, the Char-G. I reckon they’ve managed to come up with something even more fun here, and was very pleased when I was offered a sample to review.

To get the obvious stuff out the way, the car is tiny and it’s fast. At 10 cm long, it easily sits in the palm of your hand and at a mere 42g weighs next to nothing. Tomy claims it will do up to 22km/h. I was sceptical at first, but having seen it in action I can believe it. It’s certainly more than fast enough for bombing around indoors. It takes about 20 minutes to charge using the portably charging unit (which takes 4 x AA batteries, not included). From that, you get about 10 minutes driving time.

For comparison, it’s about half the price of the Losi Micro T (though of course you lose a few features including proportional steering, full suspension and rubber tyres).

The GX Buggy remote control (which takes 2 x AAA batteries, not included) offers proportional acceleration, plus braking and reverse as well as (non-proportional, i.e. just left/straight/right) steering. I’d quite like proportional steering, obviously, but even without it the car is an awful lot of fun to drive.

The foam rubber tyres are perfect for indoor use, with good grip on both lino and carpet.

Since it’s so small and light, you’d expect it to flip over when it hits things and spend a lot of time upside down. It cleverly self-rights though thanks to a plastic ring, the ‘roll wing’, which (usually) puts it back on its tyres very pleasingly.

And, being so small and light, and with such good acceleration, it can jump really high even with quite a short run up.

I have not tried it outside yet, but while I think it’ll run ok on tarmac I would be a little nervous about how long the foam tyres would last. I would love to take it to a concrete skate park and see how it performs there though. Should be lot of fun in a half pipe.