Customer Reviews

Carrera USA Digital 132, West Hampton Race Car Set

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First off I purchased this set from Amazon in October for this years Christmas (2010)for my kids ages 4 and 6. The price was about $50 less than the local hobby shop so I picked up the extension kit that Amazon offered - More bang for the buck already. I was doing research between Scalextric and Carrera and Carrera seemed to win out for me. Although Scalextric seems to have more cars to choose from. I found out afterwards, to convert an analog car to digital, Scalextrix has one uniform chip whereas Carrera has up to 5 or 6 chips, so you need to pay attention to the car and chip required for going analog to digital (that's sorta a drag).

Come Christmas day the kids and I are racing like nuts. They both have expressed that this is the best thing ever.

So for the review:
I will say the manual is one of them multi-language/print is sort of small books. I did have to re-read a couple of parts over to get the idea of how to program the cars. Regardless, once I got the hang of it, very easy (hence my 4 star overall rating).

The track is a bit more riged (according to reviews between Carrera and Scalextric) and wider to accommodate both 1/32 and 1/24 scale cars. I have to agree on the research I did, if you do not have a lot of room for a track, Carrera may not be a good choice, it does need a lot of room. However, the connections fit together perfect and adding the guard rails was a snap (no pun intended). We've already gone through two layout changes and the track is still holding up with no breaks, but I haven't really let the kids try and set the track up as it is large for their hands

The cars seem to be be very durable. Except, yes, the side mirrors will break off easy. Perhaps a softer plastic or rubber for those parts, but no big deal really. My 4 year old did press down hard on one car to fit it in the slot, now he knows better after I explained that the car just needs to rest in the slot, but the car is still running perfectly.

Is it an educational toy? Well I hope it's not the way the kids think you should drive a car. But other than explaining the programming, why cars fly off the track at high speeds and sportmanship, no it is not educational like Leapster, but it sure is fun.

The controllers could use a longer cord maybe. In the future, provided the kids still are interested, I'll probably opt for the wireless controllers so we can spread out a bit. But they are very sturdy. I may do the programming to set the cars to a slower speed for my kids which is possible. As my research did find and my kids proved, kids only know two speeds, stop and wide open fast.

Overall, if you have young kids I highly reccommend playing this with them as to make sure they don't try and walk on the track or yank the controllers because they forgot to put it down before putting a car back on the track on the other side of the room. Yes parts will probably break, it's a toy.

I had slot cars as a kid so I really looked forward to racing with my kids and even my daughter enjoys the racing. Like any slot car track you do need to take care when setting up, breaking down and even racing. This isn't a Hot Wheel battery powered toy that most little kids are accustomed to and beat around. With proper supervision you should have many days and years of enjoyment from this set.

I bought this for my 9 and 11 year old sons. It is our first digital track. They have lots of fun playing with it but are really wanting more track to make it bigger. It can hold up to 6 cars at a time--so I will be purchasing more. It does take up quite a lot of room and needs to be on hard surface, not carpet. Challenging to put guide rails on track, but once on seems pretty durable. I am happy with this purchase and plan on expanding the track (if I can find room!!).

This is not something you can just plug in and race. Because it involves a computer the chances of it working (and working consistently) are slim, and with no tech support from Carrera we got very frustrated.

I got this carrera set for my son and we started playing together immediataly. At the end of the first day, it got broken and the car were not responding anymore. I sent back the controls. Only after two weeks they sent back another piece that broke almost immediately. I wrote the carrera people again and they did not respond to me anymore.
Although this toy has a lot of potential of being a lot of fun for childrens and dads, sadly it did not work. I would definitely suggest people to turn towards another brand.