Well, for a first tank if you prefer modern armor then I recommend going with a vstank or a tokyo marui. They are smaller, 1/24, but they are high quality, high detail, and unreasonably durable. I dropped my vs leopard from about five feet, it hit upside down and didn't even suffer a scratch. My HL fell off of a 7 inch tall box and broke two pieces off. The VStanks and tokyo marui won't run well on grass, but do great on dirt and rocks and indoors. Also they come with combat system allready installed, or if you prefer, an airsoft gun, which is more powerful than the HL airsoft gun. Not sure why you would want an rc tank with a powerful airsoft gun but, to each his own.

I have a HL 1/16 pershing and it's a lot of fun, even though the smoker stopped working within a few days. But I like my vstanks more.

Whatever you do, don't buy one of Hen Long's 1/24 scale tanks. I think everyone can agree on that.

The main drawback of the VS and toky marui tanks is that they don't have proportional control. They have 3 speeds forward, 2 turning speeds, and one reverse speed.

HL smoke and sound pershing has "virtual proportional", that means it has like 8 speeds, so it feels a lot like proportional speed control. The other HL 1/16 tanks only have 2 speeds I believe.