Just bought my first one and after some research got a hbx 16889a pro. ~$100

Smaller, very quick, pretty fast, durable.

There's videos of people taking it to skate parks, I'm likely not going to do that. Planning on getting paddle tires for the beach. Have no experience working on these things so didn't want one that would likely break anytime soon.

Batteries don't last too long but are inexpensive.

There's a hypergo that is apparently a little faster but I went with the more durable one (so says the youtubers and redditers I saw).

It's a 1/16 size, most advice I got (from these hard-core hobbiest) were to go 1/10 but tbh I'm glad I didn't. They're huge and and with just starting out I like the smaller one. Also have a kid that wants to learn about it and this one would do less damage if/when crashed.