ORIGINAL: crankpin
Need some opinions here. I have heard good and bad about Hobby King, more good then bad. Looking at the new MA today, HK has a 4 or 5 page ad, on most items we can use. Recently, I paid $114.99 each, plus postage for JR 8411 digital servos. Alloy gears, 155 oz. @ 6V. HK is advertising a digital servo, 197 oz. torque, alloy gears, @ $31.08 each, and shipping of course. HK only shows their servos in metric, so it is 5.60 KG, everything is round figures here, not splittin' hairs. I just picked out a same chl TX, everything looks the same, and the name JR is on the HK ad, $100.00 less. To me, a TX purchase for only a C note, not worth it, because of Horizons service.
Is the HK servos, where I can purchase 4 of described above, for the price I pay for one, here in the states? Is this good stuff ? Has the manufacturers given the US Distributors a certain time of lead, before they go direct, lets say from China, Saipan, Korea, or wherever ? Then it is a free for all. Is this product that is being or is discontinued from the main pipeline, and selling old stuff? Looks new and same to me, as the Horizon ads.
I have to say this. I have had the best service out of Horizon, thru the years. There were times when I sent my CC # along with my gear, and the invoice came back, at NC. Horizon has upgraded receivers for me, N/C, and has gone thru my X9303, with a small service charge. IMO, can't beat the service. I need more servos, same as the 8411's. Do I take a chance on 4 generics @ $31.08 each, X 4 = $125.00 plus shipping, or pay $460.00 plus shipping for the 4 JR 8411's ? What would you do ? This may have been talked out already, but need some opinions. Are the cheapies, JR's ? What about Dymond servos ?
Thanks for reading, and any comments.
Crank
Torque specs for 8411's are actually 155 oz. (11 kg.) @ 4.8 v and 188 oz. (13.5 kg) @ 6 v. Therefore 197 oz. would be closer to 14 kg. and 5.6 kg. would be approx. 80 oz. (quite a bit of difference between these specs).
A $31 servo that will perform the same as a 8411? I don't think so.
As has already been said, you get what you pay for.
You may pay a bit extra for a well known brand high end servo, but some of the reason for this is that these companies do alot of R&D so as to provide a quality product that will perform as stated. This then filters down to cheaper servos from that same company that benefit from that R&D.
A product with similar specs from a "cheap" brand company that is considerably cheaper, is cheaper for a reason. You simply are not going to get the same quality and performance from a servo that costs 1/4 of the price. The cheapies i have seen have a fair bit of play in the gear train.
You do occasionally get very good prices for brand name servos from cheaper brand outlets, but you can also be getting copies.
Also just because some of the brand name companies are getting there products manufactured in China, Malaysia or where ever and they are made in the same factory as cheapies, doesn't mean they are made with the same quality parts/materials etc. If something is cheaper it's because they are using cheaper (inferior) parts/materials and the same quality is not there. If something costs $100 to manufacture from one company, you will not get the same product from another company 4 times cheaper, unless cheaper parts are used. This then reduces the quality of the product.
As one eg. I have found even in the JR range of servos, the cheaper range will not centre as well as the more expensive range. I am quite prepared to pay more for a servo that when the stick is put back to centre, the servo will go back to the same position every time. This is just one example of the benefits of a brand name servo. Reliability is another. I have been flying for 17 years and in that time i have used JR exclusively and only had one servo failure. I've never had a Tx or Rx problem. I never take off wondering if i am going to have a servo failure. It actually never crosses my mind.