As a person that worked in a failure analysis lab for a major semiconductor manufacturer, and as a person that managed a biomedical engineering repair shop for 15 years, just let me say I find the arguments presented by DrMotor as entertainment value only and not something I would consider using for my own RC motor purchasing decisions. His arguments are erroneous for the many reasons noted by more astute posters. His tests were not to extreme limits nor for extended periods of widely varying operation. In the semiconductor company I worked for, we sold components to the military for about 10X what average commercial buyers paid. The difference was massive testing and the rejection of most batches that were tested. The few batches of chips that passed these extreme tests were the ONLY batches that the militaryc hips came from. The testing cost more than the components themselves. Both the military chips and the commercial chips came from the same company and LOOKED exactly the same. They WERE NOT the same. Batches that could not meet military specs were sold into the commercial market as the "run of the mill" component at the standard commercial price. You could see some of those chips in blister packs at your local Radio Shack for about 10% of what the military contractors paid us for the best stuff.

Beyond that, components that are very closely matched to each other will have additional testing costs tacked on to the already high best batch cost. If say 10 components have to be matched, they very few matched sets come out of a batch of chips. That costs extra as well. If a single component in that matched set fails when a product is in final test, then to repair it and retest means that all 10 pieces will probably need replacement unless a single component that exactly matches those 10 matched pieces can be found. For instance, this is why your local stereo/TV repair shop cannot fix Conrad-Johnson high end music amps that used highly matched components that are usually proprietary. The low-to-no-feedback design of C-J does NOT allow out-of-tolerance components as there is no negative feedback to correct for that. Cheap consumer audio products will usually have negative feedback to allow next-out-of-the-box component assembly and have a workable device with reasonable sound that is more easily affordable.

Stradivarius violins were not made that way, however, and neither are the best RC motors and speed controllers. DrMotor sounds to me like he might be a shill for a Chinese mass producer of electrical products. The Chinese just do not compete in some areas, like the best headphones, microphones, and stereo cartridges. Those things are design and engineering works of art and not a "copycat" device where "looks" mean they are the same thing. Most of what makes them what they are are not visibly seen so you can tear them down and look at them all you want and you will never discover the secrets that make them what they are. Hooking them up to test equipment and doing simple tests will also lead you nowhere to finding out what makes them what they are. The Chinese have yet to give us something that can pass for a real Fender Telecaster guitar, much less a Steinway piano. They are not into that market. They sell on "looks" that can be had at a cheap price. That is good enough for some folks. They are very good at low end products that have a high labor content. There is nothing wrong with that, as some people want that.

Kontronik, Neu Motor, Plettenberg, Scorpion, Novak and some others have nothing to fear from Turnigy. A low price WILL NOT sway them from what they know is a superior product, and they KNOW they pay a high price for that. I am NOT going to give up Conrad-Johnson amps made in Virginia, Denon phono cartridges made in Japan, and AKG headphones made in Austria just because I can pick up vile sounding Chinese junk for chump change, thank you very much. Oh yes, some prostitute audio mag somewhere has somebody saying the cheap Chinese product sounds "just as good" because their test equipment measurement said so. A human being can INSTANTLY tell if a Bosendorfer or Steinway piano is being played, where the most advanced computer systems cannot. Some people are tone deaf and can't tell between a saxophone or a trumpet. That is a personal thing and similarly people will have vastly different requirements and ideas of what a good RC motor or ESC is and how much they are willing to pay.

For what it's worth, I remember reading about many different manual ventilators being tested in my biomedical engineering journal. About half of them did not pass the test. All the ones that did NOT pass the test were designed by medical doctors. All the ones that DID pass the test were designed by biomedical engineers. Being a medical doctor is seen as a mark AGAINST you by any biomedical engineer I have ever known as far as electronic devices go, as we have usually had some rather interesting experiences wher e we had to fix things they decided to fix themselves. Circuit boards turned to junk and that sort of thing.

Brushing my teeth one morning in the bathroom of the medical university where I got my training, I was talking to a medical student. He had previously been enrolled in electrical engineering but had to quit and go into the medical field because he just could not get "the abstract theory of electrical engineering where everything is mathematically described and calculated and you can't really see what is happening. It was too abstract for me. I have to "see" what is going on in order to get it".

DrMotor seems to be in the same boat as that guy, but that guy knew when to quit and go into something that he "got".