Gosh nobody has mentioned Giant Scale Planes yet. Must be because they don't sell very many.

Actually, it all depends on your experience. If you only fly high wing aircraft, how would you know that some CAPs are snappy and some aren't? If you only build really cheap ARFs you may not know that great quality is available for just a little more.

As far as individual manufacturers go, the big guys (Horizon/Hanger9 and Great Planes/Top Flight/Hobbico/Tower) have some cheap junk and some very high quality stuff.

And to top it all off, the quality of the average ARF is increasing so rapidly that what is great today will probably be cheap junk next year.

For now I'd stay away from anything that doesn't have a real iron-on covering and anything from China Models/CM Pro/Giant Scale Planes/Flair/Jamara

Jim