Which is the best early KV-1 kit?

Armor/AFV
,
1

Hello hello once again guys, I have come to once again ask for everyone’s opinions
But, I suppose this will also be good for posterity!
So, I want to get myself an early KV-1 (Either model 1940, or 1941, pretty much the one with the small gun and no applique armor)
From reading around, it seems that the Trumpeter kit is very highly recommended? But I heard trumpeter’s plastic isn’t great, and also, the wheels aren’t workable, and I kind of really want all my tanks to have workable wheels on which I put workable tracks…
So, other than trumpeter, here are the other options I am considering:

And, yeah! Those are the options I found! There may be other options, but scalemates didn’t have instructions for them so it’s hard to make a judgement
I’d very much like your guys’ opinions, especially if anyone has experience with any of the above. I know this is purely subjective, and there might not be a consensus, but, just having everyone’s thoughts for future fence sitters might be good!
Alright, that’s all, cheers!

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Hi!

I’m not an expert on KV-1s, but I’d probably suggest the Tamiya kit over the Trumpeter kit. The Tamiya kit is listed for around 50 USD on Scalemates, while the Trumpeter kit is listed for around 40 USD. I bet that the Trumpeter kit could be built up into something nice, but keep in mind that it’s a 2005 release. Trumpeter’s early 90s and 2000s releases don’t have the best reviews, but they seemed to have picked up their quality sometime around 2002-2003. But compare this to Tamiya’s track record, and along with that their kit being a 2020 release with ideally better molding quality and fit (also it comes with a little paper gift).

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It’s just up to your own choice though. But an important thing of note would be that the Tamiya kit comes with string for the tow cable while the Trumpeter kit comes with copper rope, and unfortunately both kits don’t have workable tracks and wheels. Also, I can’t see the paint schemes for the Trumpeter kit but the Tamiya kit only comes with two.

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Trumpeter

Tamiya

Zvezda

RFM

HTH

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