Hooben Cromwell

[DavidN]

Twin-horse offered 20% off to members from SoCal RC Tank Club. I took my chance and I got for myself the Cromwell RTR. To my surprise, it runs smooth and well. The tracks are a bit fragile. Its barrel recoils accordingly when fires. It also compatible with our Tamiya/LegoDEI battle protocol. Its apple does light up and remains quite bright during the battle. This makes it very attractive to the opponents. I am not gonna bother about opening it up at this time. I will probably battle it at our indoor event instead of outdoor. I am a happy tanker.

[DavidN]

[DavidN]

[PanzerLoco]

Dear DavidN,
Thank you for your review and beautiful picture of your new acquisition.
For the benefit of the RC Tank community & myself ; can you provide information of the type of battery and connection that HOOBEN Tanks are using.
I am considering to buy in the near future their HETZER tank hunter version

[DavidN]

It came with the 2200 mAh Lipo battery and the Tamiya plug. As you can see, there are so many screws at the bottom of this tank. I don't feel like open it up at this time.

[tank_me]

Dear DavidN,
I am considering to buy in the near future their HETZER tank hunter version

Good luck with that.

Never seen a Hooben 1/16 Hetzer in any social media posts or in the flesh where a customer actually owns one.

Hooben has a reputation of advertising things that aren't actually in stock and excessively long pre-order times (like over a year in some cases), and general lack of support. Buyer beware. David seems to have developed a relationship with Hooben where he gets response from them, but he is the exception and not the rule. There is a general disdain for Hooben among RC tankers. They produce some unique RTR tanks, but most (including myself) have had to rework and re-engineer parts of the Hooben tanks to get them to even run right out of the box. They've used like 3 different kinds of electronics at this point and parts are hard to get. Once again, David has gotten parts from them, but I have never even gotten them to respond to any Emails I have ever sent to them about parts.

[Rubicon99]

Good luck with that.

Never seen a Hooben 1/16 Hetzer in any social media posts or in the flesh where a customer actually owns one.

Hooben has a reputation of advertising things that aren't actually in stock and excessively long pre-order times (like over a year in some cases), and general lack of support. Buyer beware. David seems to have developed a relationship with Hooben where he gets response from them, but he is the exception and not the rule. There is a general disdain for Hooben among RC tankers. They produce some unique RTR tanks, but most (including myself) have had to rework and re-engineer parts of the Hooben tanks to get them to even run right out of the box. They've used like 3 different kinds of electronics at this point and parts are hard to get. Once again, David has gotten parts from them, but I have never even gotten them to respond to any Emails I have ever sent to them about parts.

RichJohnson here on this forum and over on RCU has a number of Hooben tanks that he posted about. He too has a good working relationship with Hooben and has even worked with them on several improvements.

Hooben does have a poor CS reputation that is without a doubt and learning the "back channels" to get to someone to help is more luck then anything else.

Hooben makes great looking nice indoor running models, but if someone wants an outdoor reliable runner with no additional hands on modification work then Hooben is not for them.

I think David stated that he is planning on using his Cromwell for the SoCal clubs indoors battles. That's a good call 👍👍.

[PanzerLoco]

Thank you gentleman for your time & the ''head up'' warning.
Buy in the past from HOOBEN; but never buy a tank from them.

[SoCalBobS]

David, any impressions or observations about your Cromwell after a couple of weeks? Have you had any experience with Twin-Horse's customer service? More data, please!

[DavidN]

I will bring the Cromwell to the event in Chino to test it out this Saturday. So far it runs fine in my backyard. Regarding Twin-horse, I had an issue with one tank. Twin-horse sent the picture of my issue to the manufacture and requested a replacement. I paid $12 for shipping fee to have the new part sent to me.

[RichJohnson]

FYI, twin horse is hooben, Lillian is the person you communicate with, but they are another name for hooben.

[DavidN]

Got it! They also sell Tongde and Henglong tanks on their website.

[quitcherbitchen]

So how are you buying your Hooben tanks? Off Twin Horses website or some other channel? I see their stuff on Aliexpress and eBay. I tried communicating thru Aliexpress but dead silence. They read it but dont comment.

[DavidN]

I communicated with Twin Horse's rep and ordered straight through her since our club get 20% off whatever the prices on their website.

[DavidN]

I brought the Cromwell to run at the event last Saturday. However, the event was indoor. Everything with this tank was fine on concrete. I have plenty of tanks to battle outdoor, so I intend to run this one indoor only for most of the time in the future.