When my students ask for suggestions, I steer them away from the nextstar. Its an ok plane but not rugged enough for training. It flys ok once you take off all that trainer junk they stick on the plane, bolt on flaps, leading edge extensions (brain dump, cant remember the name), high speed needle limiters and disconnect any stablization system. Now we are at a standard plane setup, which does ok. My biggest complaint is the main landing gear. If you hit something, taxi way edge or anything like that, it usually rips out the main gear mounts which means major repair. The trainers I like use wire gear that can be bent back to shape. I point the students towards the hobbico 60 or alpha 40. For the electric guys, apprentice or H9 alpha electric. My first choice is any of the Kadets, but they can be hard to get. The tower trainer is not bad but suffers from quality control issues. 3 out of 3 had warped wings, 3 different students. Tower made good on all of them and they were good durable flyers. It was the delay. I checked each one and it was not an assembly problem. It was one panel warped and one had both panels warped so bad it was a screw. You could see it. Any arf could have loose hardware, its just the nature of consumer production.
Edwin