The complete AppSpeed Monster Truck kit consists of a motorized toy truck with roughly the same footprint as an iPod touch or iPhone—smaller than one might guess from the company’s pictures—plus a USB charging cable, a plastic portable battery pack, and the aforementioned dongle. There’s going to be a larger line of AppSpeed toys, including cars, but the Monster Truck turns out to be a really smart first product in the family. It’s capable of going surprisingly fast on flat surfaces, and even can traverse carpeted floors, using its treaded tires to get over somewhat uneven terrain. Though it’s almost entirely made from plastic, it still looks pretty cool, featuring bright white headlights that illuminate whenever it’s moving forwards. While it’s not as menacing in person as Parrot’s or Griffin’s helicopters, the Monster Truck is big enough to bulldoze or roll over Matchbox cars and Lego sets without a problem, and nowhere near as dangerous to stand around as a flying machine. At top speeds, it would be hard to bruise a baby with the Truck, but it’s fast enough to run behind, and split-second responsive to the iOS device’s control. Two trucks can be used at once over two different RF channels.
We particularly appreciated Dexim’s power strategy with AppSpeed: the USB cable’s there to refuel the truck, bringing a internal rechargeable cell fully back from the dead within 15 minutes if you’re near a computer. if you’re not near a computer, you can put three AAA cells of your own into the battery pack to charge the truck on the go. AppSpeed’s RF transmitter dongle doesn’t require any special batteries. It just pops into the iPhone’s, iPod touch’s, or iPad’s bottom port and shares the device’s internal power source, with modest power drain. you can control the Monster Truck from a distance of roughly 60 feet away before signal strength begins to become an issue; line of sight is not in any way required, and the truck can run for 30 minutes or more on a single charge.
While attaching a dongle isn’t as easy or power-efficient as Parrot’s solution of just changing Wi-Fi networks, the dongle’s a lot better than Helo TC’s, which requires you to strap a huge box with four AAA cells onto the back of your device. The single biggest issue with Dexim’s dongle is that it’s not case-compatible, so you’ll need a bare device or a flip-open case such as Speck’s CandyShell Flip or Wrap to plug it in. as well as the dongle works overall, we’d like to see Dexim further improve the shape and power draw in subsequent versions, or find a way to make AppSpeeds use other wireless connectivity options.
Controlling the Monster Truck is relatively easy thanks to the nicely designed, free DF Speed application—an app that contains Retina display artwork for iPhones and iPod touches, but runs in low-res upscaled mode on iPads. You’re given two control options, one called “Touch Sensor” and the other “Gravity Sensor.” Dexim’s “Gyro Controlled” billing for the Monster Truck comes from the fact that the app’s Gravity mode lets you tilt your device in any direction to steer, using a flat horizontal orientation as a neutral starting position. While this mode works well and is completely intuitive for steering, your maximum speed is capped at “8,” or roughly half of the Monster Truck’s maximum capabilities. There’s no turbo button on this screen to kick the Truck into high gear, either.
In Touch mode, the screen is divided into a road that you swipe diagonally left to move forward, and diagonally right to move backwards. Up and down arrows turn the wheels right or left, and a