The stock boat is good but you need to upgrade to release the beast.
Start with a 5200mAH 11.1v 50C Lipo.
Proboat PRB3308 Motor Collet.
Proboat PRB28006 Propeller.
1/4 oz weights to balance boat.
Traxxas 1985 Teflon washers place at the end of the flex shaft after greasing.
Total upgrade $110.00.

I got this boat a week ago and I love it. I have been throwing up a bunch of video of it running under Proboat Recoil 26 on YouTube if anyone wants to check out how it handles chop and small waves. Super fun to jump this boat I have done barrel rolls with it and full 360s in the air as well as submarined it a time or two. One thing to note is make sure you grease the flex shaft and also don't go in reverse too much or at all if possible because it sucks water into the hull if done in excess. Great boat highly recommend!

Decided to try boats after many yrs of a/c.

This thing is a blast!

Sure; the radio is not top notch, but look at the price point.
The radio works fine for my purposes. Not sure why the complaints about range?
I don't run this 26" boat 300 yards from me! LOL

My only complaint was when I tried to remove the shaft for greasing. Wow! The collet seemed welded to the nut; took a lot of effort to get it out!

Some are claiming 4-5 mins run time on a 3200-3500 Mah?
Ha! I get about 3.5 mins, but then again, I run it flat out nearly the entire run.

For under 300 bucks; this is great bang for the buck.

I LOVE this boat. Enough to write a review so that others may share in the joy. I have most of Proboat's stuff, 95%, to include a Miss Geico 36, Zelos and Sonic Wake. Those boats are really good but this is great. The quality of the paint on the boat hull isn't the best, and the top cover is terrible thin plastic, but thats it! Man this thing with a sharpened prop (Octura x640) is amazing, easily hits 33 mph and looks like its doing 50. Turns on a dime, to the point i dialed it down which I never did on the other boats. I can do full speed, turn it, and do a nose stand. The thing can dive, pop back up, flip upside down, and self right without any input. On the waviest, choppiest days I am excited to take it out and watch it get some air with no worries. If only the other boats (including the dismal Sonic Wake) could be as fun. If you want to have fun with a boat, not worry about speed but still look fast and not worry about recovery THIS is the boat for you! Big thumbs up to Proboat for making this awesome boat, I'll buy a few more just to have backups.

I bought this boat at my LHS after viewing the other pro-boat options on Horizon's website. I will admit I got caught up with the larger and faster boats Horizon has to offer but I settled for this boat and I am glad I did. I used to race nitro r/c boats 10-15 years ago and I quit after getting tired of going to retrieve them when they quit running or flipped over. I figured the technology with li-po batteries was good enough these days and I have been going to the lake alot more and wanted something to screw around with behind the boat. This thing is fast! I have to put the speed limiter on for my girlfriend so she doesn't kill us or my dogs who swim after it. I gave it a 4 star on the quality because the boat leaks water (even after greasing the prop shaft and adding the teflon washer like stated in the first review posted here). I ran it stock (with a 5000mah 3S) until I was using it in our pool to exercise my dogs and the receiver locked up and the boat went full speed into the vinyl liner and made a hole, surprisingly the boat was fine. After that incident I decided to buy the $18 MRX200 fully sealed receiver, which to be honest I see not difference other than there is black silicone around the unit. **I also recommend buying some spare props for this boat if you run in shallow ponds with debris as I've broken a few of them, I wish there was a steel prop available.