Besides the original Tiger I, all of Tamiya's RC armor offerings fall short of being a great scale model and I probably wouldn't consider them a 'good value'.

As a modeler and an engineer, It's a given you'd spot to short comings, and short of Trumpeter's static kits, anything in 1/16 pales in comparison compared to 1/35. Heck, I've had 1/72 kits that were better detailed than some 1/16.

It sucks, but it's the way it is. Tamiya has always been expensive compared to other modeling companies, and in armor at least, not as good as DML, AFV Club or Tristar, but they are the originators of the 1/16 RC genre and after a while, when you look at the other offerings or what the cost in cash and time it would be to convert, the price is more palatable.

I remember when I bought my first, the M4. I felt the same as you. Coming from the static modeling world, dropping $500 on a kit was hard to do and to open the box ans see a 1970 mold without detail I was livid. But after assembly, the blow was lessened. Then I got the Tiger I, which is still their best. After that I went with a few HLs, and then you really get an idea of the quality of Tamiya and the value is in that it works.

So, value no, but it's a hobby. I'm typing this on an eight year old Macbook Pro that I use probably six hours a day. In the past eight years, I probably could have bought 5 new Macbooks for what I've spent on tank models and I'm lucky if I spend 6 hours a month running them collectively. None of that makes sense.