My recommendation is goto the hobby shop closest to you, go on youtube and watch videos of most of the different trucks mentioned in this forum, read the different truck threads, and decide that way.

Personally I'm a little biased towards HPI and would recommend a MT2, others are biased towards Traxxas, Losi, etc...
Everyone will claim the brand they like is the best, the truck they own is the best, fastest, and most durable thing ever made.

One thing I will say is stay away from redcat nitro's they are low priced for a reason, they need alot of work out of the box to make them last over 3 months(was going to buy one till I read about them on the forums here) and there is low parts availability in case something breaks. So I would look at what the LHS near you stocks in parts, check ebay, and [link=http://www3.towerhobbies.com]Tower Hobbies[/link] to price out how much replacements/hopups are and plan from there. This way you won't buy something based on someone elses opinion which you potentially might not like.



I will state the MT2's pros and cons though
Pros: Easy to work on, good parts availability, replacement parts are relatively low priced, Pretty good durability (I have not broken one MT2 part all summer)
Cons: Ball cup ends keep stripping off the turnbuckle (depends on what model), Limited aftermarket support (GPM only maker of aftermarket parts)


It also helps to know your pricerange